The Anywhere Cannon
by CoyoteLoon
Summary: Still stinging from defeat, the Cluster rolls out an ultimate weapon to deal with Jenny, and anyone else foolish enough to stand in their way. Earth's only hope of survival could rest with the Cluster Underground ... and an unlikely helper. [complete]
1. Minor Annoyances

All right, here we go … I said I'd write the original version of this story, if you guys asked for it. Never let it be said that CoyoteLoon was a welcher! Ummm …. let's just forget the first aborted attempt at telling this story, okay? Also, I'm going to assume that you're familiar with the characters of Teenage Robot (which I _totally_ don't own), and with my series of fics featuring the shape-shifting, human-turned-android, Drew Nabholtz. Especially the Cluster Dawn Trilogy.

Okay, this story takes place after the events of Cluster Dawn, which saw our heroes taken to Cluster Prime, run for their lives, fall in love, escape from near death, and save the Earth from a massive Cluster invasion. These events all transpire _before_ the start of Season Two, in my version of the show's continuity. Now, even though we've seen the "Escape From Cluster Prime" movie, Teen-Bot creator Rob Renzetti himself has said that it was _supposed_ to be the lead-in for Season Three (Nickelodeon got its episode broadcast schedule screwed up; they haven't even finished showing Season Two episodes yet). This story takes place _before_ the one-hour movie, _during_ the course of Season Two. So don't be surprised to see references to Season Two events.

Most importantly, Vexus is still the all-powerful, evil despotic ruler of Cluster Prime. And nobody's self-destructed, or splattered on a space trucker's windshield yet. The Cluster is still a major threat to the Earth. Heck, just consider all the Season Two episodes that have featured Cluster plots to take over the planet. Okay, everyone down with that? Just remember … Queen Vexus is still large and in charge, and the Cluster is still mean, hostile, and eager to make life miserable for our teenaged protagonists. In fact, they're up to their old tricks even as we speak …

* * *

THE ANYWHERE CANNON

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter One – Minor Annoyances

* * *

The driver shrieked in terror and yanked his steering wheel hard, sending his sleek blue station wagon careening into the plate glass window of a fine clothing shop – barely missing the massive fireball that plunged from the sky and slammed into the road, right between the skid marks he'd left behind him. The middle-aged man abandoned the crumpled vehicle, and bolted in a random direction with a dozen other panicking citizens, all of them madly dodging the tumbling clumps of red-hot asphalt kicked up from the fresh blast crater. Another globe of fiery combustion screeched down from the clouds and slammed into the remnants of the station wagon, sending its charred husk hurtling skyward on an ugly orange and black plume of burning fuel. Fearful pedestrians looked skyward, following the trail left by the deadly fireball projectile …

To see an evil, ten-foot-long robotic insect, swooping overhead on the pounding staccato beat of its four knife-like wings. Its rust-red head and thorax scanned for targets below while swirls of flame churned in its bulbous, translucent body; it grinned cruelly towards a quivering human mother just a hundred feet away, who was trying to calm her crying baby. A nozzle affixed to the robot's glowing abdomen pivoted to take aim, and with a powerful squeeze of its hydraulics, a fresh ball of hellfire spat out and hurtled towards the pathetic meat creature below. The young mother cringed with fear as the fireball approached …

But at the last second, a pale-blue inch-thick shield unfolded in front of her, and the blob of fire bounced harmlessly off to the side like a fifth-grader's spitball. The mother opened her eyes to see not raging flames, but the shining metallic figure of Tremorton's very own robotic guardian angel.

"Get yourself inside," Jenny smiled to the mother, as she tickled the baby's chin. "Things are about to get a _little messy_ out here."

She retracted the clamshell shield back into her torso, and leapt into the air on twin daggers of rocket exhaust. One sliver of time later, she delivered an uppercut to the chin of the offending insect-bot, sending it cartwheeling backwards into a squadron of its fire-belching brethren. The arsonist shook the loose gears in its head, then regrouped next to its robotic master, a broad-shouldered lummox who was enjoying the fiery mayhem from the perch of his personal hover-scooter, high above the downtown square. The green-chested robot commander let loose with a self-indulgent bout of evil laughter, thrusting his ostentatious forehead-horn upwards to strike a pose ripped from a bad B-movie theater poster.

"So, little XJ-9," sneered the braggadocious Commander Smytus, "what do you think of my new firefly troopers?"

"Eh, you know what they say, Smytus," Jenny grinned back at him. Her forearm split open to re-configure into her trusty laser-limb. "If you play with fire … you're gonna get burned!" And on that perfect cue, a blast of blue laser energy leapt out and sliced one of the firefly troops in half like a banana. A microsecond later, it detonated with a spectacular explosion, showering Smytus with flaming shrapnel to the delight of the human crowds below. Jenny smiled, letting the cheers feed her already considerable confidence.

Smytus clenched his metallic claws in fury, glowering back at the smug robotic teenager. With a wave of his arm, he commanded his full squadron of fireflies to attack en masse. "All right then, little girl, let's just see if you can … _take the heat_! MWA HA HA HA HAAA …"

"Oh brother," laughed Jenny, mocking the pompous Cluster commander. "I can take the heat, but I can't take much more of your _lame dialog_. I should have your little firebugs taken care of in about, oh, sixty seconds." She cracked her knuckles with a touch of showmanship. "And I'm not even gonna muss my hair!"

She bumped up her pigtail-jets to full combat thrust. A trio of fireballs screeched across the sky to converge on her position – but with a dizzying blur, she slid out of their way in a twisting loop, coming up behind the clueless clunkers that the Cluster Empire had sent her way. _So many weapons, so many choices,_ she smiled to herself … _I'm feeling a little creative today_. With a twist of her left arm, a crossbow-device deployed and locked into place. The teenage super-heroine casually adjusted her trajectory to come up behind the nearest firefly. With a loud _twang_ of the bowstring, six ninja stars sliced through the Cluster attacker's glowing abdomen, puncturing it like a balloon. Before _that_ explosion even died down, she re-configured her arm into a screaming buzz-saw. Jenny corralled another firefly-drone in a headlock, like a rodeo cowboy bulldogging a steer – then she sliced its fire-belly section off, turned it around 180 degrees, and stuck the glowing fire-nozzle right into the stunned drone's own mouth. The look on its face was _priceless_ as it blew itself to smithereens. Now, for her next victim …

"Jenny! Jenny!" yelled a familiar, youthful voice. "Hey, over here! Jenny, it's an emergency!"

Jenny slapped her forehead in frustration. "Oh, for the love of …"

She quickly scanned the street below, and sure enough, there he was, a little wide-eyed, black-haired boy down on the broken sidewalk, jumping wildly up and down to compensate for his short stature. Tuck had been following her all day long, and he was proving to be harder to shake than bad case of rust. "What in the world does the little squirt think he's _doing_?" she grumbled, clutching her pigtails in frustration. "If he's not careful, he's going to get himself _hurt_!"

And naturally, Murphy's Law picked _just_ that second to assert its sadistic self. One of the vulgar firefly-drones peeled out of the clouds and dove for the pedestrians, its belly-nozzle shimmering with liquid globs of flaming fatality. And it was heading _right for_ the street corner where Tuck was standing, a perfect human target. In a superhuman blur, Jenny shot over the chaotic street in a tall parabola, coming down fast behind the flapping wings of the dive-bombing Cluster attacker. As they _both_ hurtled towards youngest Carbunkle, she gripped the alien robot's wings by their joints and ripped them free, filling the air with foul sprays of pressurized hydraulic fluid. With another burst of sensational speed, she streaked to the street below, and flipped the lid off of a manhole with a kick of her heel. The doomed firefly-drone plunged into the manhole, detonating in the sewer with a deep reverberating _barooom_.

With _that_ catastrophe avoided, Jenny rushed over to tend to her animated, and _bothersome_, little friend. "Okay, Tuck, what's the matter? What's the big emergency?" He didn't seem to be injured. In fact, the little squirt had an excited smile on his impish little face …

"There's something important I need to ask you!" said Tuck, filled with earnest.

Flames flickered from a nearby mailbox as Jenny raised a suspicious eyebrow. "Which would be …?"

He pulled a notepad and pencil out of his comically large Johnny Zoom backpack. "I lost track. Did you do the double-loop behind that first Cluster robot _before_, or _after_ you shot the stun grenades at him?"

Jenny's fists quivered with barely-constrained anger. _Not this again._ "Look, Tuck, I'm going to tell you the same thing I told you five times this morning. I'm not going to …"

A roaring fireball from an attacking drone caught her from the side, catapulting her slender blue-and-white form fifty feet down the street, where she plowed into the engine block of a semi truck like a rag-doll cannonball. Woozy, scorched, but still dangerous, Jenny popped out of the tangled aftermath of the truck, massaging a nasty dent in the back of her head. With a flick of her wrist, her arm telescoped out into a fishing pole. A powerful swing sent a line of unbreakable carbon filament sailing into the air. It looped around the surprised drone's body, and Jenny hauled the obnoxious bug out of the sky … to land butt-first on top of a nearby fire hydrant. A violent hiss of steam launched into the air, and a geyser of water reduced the fires in the belly of Cluster minion to a moist, smoky mess.

Jenny brushed a layer of soot from her torso … and the fine dust cleared to reveal Tuck standing next to the shattered truck, eagerly jotting notes onto his pad with the enthusiasm of a cub reporter. "Interesting technique," he said, tapping the pencil to his chin. "Allowing _yourself_ to be attacked, in order to draw your enemies within firing range. Seems a little reckless, if you ask me, though. Hey, can I have your battle log tapes after you're done with these guys?"

Jenny's right arm ratcheted out at super-speed, stretching fifty feet away to take the head off of another firefly-drone with a nasty right cross. And all the while, her tired gaze never left the persistent little tyke's pleading face. Her shoulders sank with exasperation. "For the last time, Tuck … I am NOT going to teach you how to fight robots. It's too dangerous for a little guy like you to take on the Cluster!"

"Well DUH, of course it is!" blurted Tuck, laughing at mere suggestion of such a thing. "I don't want you to teach me how to fight _Cluster_ robots!"

Twin water nozzles deployed from Jenny's wrists, and she frantically rotated about her hip joints like a giant sprinkler, squirting high-pressure jets of water to extinguish incoming fireballs. She was growing more angry with _Tuck_ than she was with the Cluster attackers. "Then _why_ are you …"

Anticipating the question, Tuck reached into his backpack … and pulled out a lime green MegaSoaker 400 water cannon, softly stoking it like a beloved pet. "I want to you teach me how to fight the robots down at the Goop Zone!"

If it hadn't been bolted on, Jenny's jaw would have dropped clean off her face.

"They've got a new game room called 'Bot Buster'!" he shouted, whipping himself into a state of jittery excitement – and happily oblivious to the smoking Cluster drone wrecks that plummeted into the street all around him. "It's _so cool!_ You run around in a big room with lasers and smoke and obstacles, and zap these freaky audio-animatronic robots with your Goop Gun to score points! All the kids at school are talking about it, and they're going to have a big tournament there later this afternoon for the grand opening! Will you take me there, Jenny? Huh? _Pleeeeeeeeeeze?_ You just gotta, Jenny …"

Her right arm underwent another fantastic transformation, producing a revolving cannon barrel and an ammo magazine filled with large blue corks. She unloaded a volley of corks into the sky with a loud _thub-thub-thub_, and with a sniper's accuracy, they smacked into the flame-nozzles of another group of firefly-drones. The drones experienced a quick and very unpleasant bout of constipation, ballooned up like puffer fish, and filled the air with bright, yellow-orange explosions. Then she turned back to Tuck … who was still staring her down with his best puppy dog eyes. She cradled her forehead in frustration. "Tuck … I'm _kind_ of busy here ..."

"But you just _gotta_ help me win," he pleaded, in a tone of voice that was approaching _whiny_. "The winner of the tournament gets a great big trophy, and his picture in the paper, and a year's supply of Super Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs …"

Another firefly-drone landed behind Jenny with a heavy _thud_, and locked claws with her in close-in hand-to-hand combat. The two robots grunted and panted as they circled each other like wrestlers, but Jenny still had to deal with the additional distraction of a grade school pest that couldn't take _no_ for an answer. "Can't your … _nnnghh_ … parents … _errrrghh_ … take you? Or how about … _unnnghh_ … Brad?"

"_Nahhh_, my Mom and Dad went to some stupid all-day rhumba lesson," he huffed, still apparently ignorant of the fact that Jenny had _much_ better things to do at the moment than gab with him. "And Brad … _pffft_, what does he know about fighting robots? Sure, he _thinks_ he's hot stuff, but he couldn't beat up a robot if it was made out of wet cardboard. That's why …"

"_Arrrgh …_ just hold that thought for a second, 'kay?" Jenny shifted her weight and flipped the Cluster drone over her hip, pile-driving it into the pavement head-first. She'd grown tired of dealing with two annoyances at once, and figured that she had a much better chance of getting rid of Smytus before she'd ever get rid of Tuck. She vaulted back up to the rooftops to face off with the Cluster attackers, and with a series of whining _clanks_, underwent one final transformation. Her midsection expanded, lengthened, and rounded out, and her forearms converted into two giant, conical nozzles. As the startled remnants of the attack force looked on, Jenny completed her conversion into a giant fire extinguisher. Twin fountains of hissing foam sprayed across the sky, bathing the sputtering Cluster drones in a thick layer of frothy white chemicals. The effect was like tossing a barrel of water onto a bunch of tea candles. The last of the firefly drones pathetically fizzled out, and dropped to Earth like drowned robotic rodents.

The relieved masses of Tremorton filled the streets with a hearty cheer, an emotion _not_ shared by the snarling hulk that watched the battle wind down from his hover-scooter. Commander Smytus glowered down at his fallen army with a gap-toothed sneer, then shook a clawed fist at his teenaged foe, in classic supervillain form. "My precious firefly troops! _Nooooo!_ Curse you, XJ-9!" He pointed a threatening claw at Jenny's sweetly smiling face. "Mark my words, you may have defeated my invasion, and you may have destroyed my newest weapons, and my newest drone troopers, and you _think_ you have bested me in combat here today … okay, and you _have_ … but mark my words! Before the sun sets on this puny little town, I will have the complete and total victory that I so justly deserve!" His eyes squinted with deadly seriousness, as if he believed he could terrify the puny robot girl into surrendering by the sheer force of his will alone. "_Complete_ and _total_ victory!"

"Jeez, _everyone's_ trying to talk me to death today," Jenny snickered, as she opened up her extinguisher-nozzles for one final blast. To her great delight, she scored a direct hit on the bloviating Cluster lunkhead – coating him with a layer of foam that transformed him into a ten-foot metallic snowman! Sputtering and hurling clichéd curses, Smytus wiped the foam from his eyes, and activated the portal generator on the front of his hover-scooter. A tear in the fabric of space-time shrieked into existence, and with a pulse of his engine, the military thug beat a hasty and familiar retreat into the mouth of the wormhole, speeding back to Cluster Prime to lick his wounds.

With the latest lame-o Cluster attack taken care of, Jenny re-configured herself back to normal, and dusted her hands together with the satisfaction of another job well done. She dropped back to street level to a chorus of cheers, and to acknowledge the waves of the grateful townspeople of Tremorton …

And Tuck sprinted up to her as if the whole battle had been nothing more than a irksome interruption. "Okay, you beat the Cluster, saved the day, _blah blah blah_. So now that you're not busy any more … you can show me all about fighting robots and you can take me to Goop Zone so I can win that trophy this afternoon, right? Huh? Right? Huh? Right?"

Jenny groaned and massaged her stainless steel temples; the idea of spending an afternoon with Tuck in tow, when he was in one of these moods, was _not_ something that held a lot of appeal to her. Besides, she was in serious need of a post-battle wash and wax. "There has _got_ to be someone else who can take you. How about Sheldon?"

"Naw, he said something about having to catalog his fungus collection." Tuck clasped his hands together as if he were pleading for a new kidney. "C'mon, Jen, you've gotta help me win that trophy. Everyone knows you're the best robot fighter in town. Listen to all those people cheering!" He almost stifled a wicked little grin; the flattery was just another strategy to crack through Jenny's iron resolve. "I mean, you even managed to teach _Drew_ how to fight … hey, that's it! Why don't get _him_ to do your stupid world-saving stuff _for_ you? _Then_ you could take me to Goop Zone this afternoon!"

She rolled her eyes, amazed at the little pest's persistence. "Tuck, you know he doesn't fight bad guys any more. His parents made him stop after we got back from Cluster Prime. They even made him get a part-time job." That was a real shame, too, she sighed to herself. It _had_ been nice having help defending the Earth every now and then; quicker battles meant more mall time for her. But, she'd saved the world all by herself _long before_ Drew and his nanobots had come along – it just meant that things were back to normal now. Jenny mused, for what must have been the hundredth time, over the cruel irony of it all. She was a robotic teenager with fantastic powers whose overbearing mother insisted that she _had_ to save the world, and who _refused_ to let her shuck that heavy responsibility. Drew's problem was the exact opposite.

Tuck folded his arms with a loud _harrumph_, not bothering to mask the contempt he felt towards Tremorton's number _two_ robot teenager. "Oh, yeah … right. Mister 'Wonder Weenie'. _Geez_, what a waste. All those freaky robot powers, and instead of doing something big and important … all he does is hang out at the mall and make hot dogs. Wow, how lame can you get?"

* * *

Half a galaxy away, against the blood-colored disk of a massive sun that licked at a stainless steel horizon, an unnatural slice opened up in the middle of the air like a hellmouth spewing forth a metallic demon. The spine-curdling _chitterring_ of warped space was drowned out by the whine of anti-gravity engines, and a moment later, Commander Smytus' hover-scooter flung itself out of the vortex, back into the crimson skies of Cluster Prime. His growls and curses were scarce heard below as he accelerated into a tight turn, leaving a faint trail of white foam behind him, and flew towards the giant slate-colored trapezoid that rose above the hard grey surface like a Mayan pyramid. The bright colors of the capital's skyscrapers twinkled to the east, looking more beautiful than ever as a rainbow of holograms and neon lights fought off the lengthening shadows of the approaching dusk. But there was no such festivity to be seen anywhere on the wide, harsh territory of Base One Zero.

The new and improved military installation, which replaced the unfortunate Base Zero One, was a humbling testament to the still-fearsome might of the Cluster Empire. Roach-drone barracks and weapons armories sat in ordered rows for miles, cluttering the landscape with thick, brooding buildings of riveted steel. A dozen giant frameworks sprang up out of the cold smooth ground like metallic skeletons; the progress of the new construction evidenced by the twinkling of fifty thousand arc welding torches. Insect-shaped fightercraft, their rocket engines screeching with blinding nuclear fire, howled over swarms of CPAF wasp troopers flying on patrol. Attack cruisers larger than city blocks eased into carefully controlled landing patterns, touching down at the hangars to take on fresh troops and supplies. A rumbling _hummmm_ reverberated from the hard surface of the central parade ground, as if it had been transformed into a giant bass speaker, by the thundering transit of six hundred heavy attack hover-tanks. The _screech_ of turbines and sharp _clank_ of machinery were omnipresent, as was the choking odor of ozone and petrochemicals. And layered over the activity was the constant, mechanical rhythm of metallic footsteps. The perfectly synchronized rhythm of thousands of marching robotic soldiers, outfitted in full field kits and battle armaments. The military base was a dystopian vision, the ultimate symbol of the robotic might and brute strength that fueled the Cluster's dreams of galactic conquest.

A column of seven-foot-tall heavy drone troopers marched mindlessly past the endless line of growling hover-tanks, clomping in perfect unison towards the starship hangars that blistered the horizon. They turned in sync, like the teeth of a gear, and wove through three battalion-sized formation of drones headed in three different directions for field maneuvers. And this was a _light_ day of activity on the base. The hangars were on the other side of Base One Zero, and the quickest way there was to march past the front of the gargantuan, uninviting slate-colored pyramid. The one with the scowling special guards out front, at attention underneath the cast-iron sign which read _Base One Zero Headquarters_. Taking no notice of the building, except for use as a navigational checkpoint, the column of assembly-line-produced soldiers tramped onward, their footsteps pounding the ground with relentless monotony.

All, that is, save for the very last drone. Who slipped out of line, and quickly but casually made his way to the side of the headquarters building.

He seemed to be inspecting a dumpster-sized power distributor. But he was _really_ assuring himself that nobody was paying attention to him. Convinced that nobody was, he slipped behind the distributor, to one of the thick power conduits that ran up the side of the pyramid like a drainpipe.

And he _flowed_ himself up the conduit, his seemingly solid body transforming into a fluid, silver-green python of shimmering goo.

Quickly and silently, the silvery tentacle ascended the power conduit like a vine climbing a tree, until it reached a small ventilation duct half-way up the sixty-story complex. With a soft _gurgle_, the tentacle nudged itself between two of the slats in the six-inch-wide duct cover, and disappeared inside.

From another duct cover inside the building, a thin stalk poked out inside of a darkened room. It checked to make sure that the room was empty – as expected – and then the full mass of shiny goo poured itself out of the ductwork, slopping into an amorphous blob on the floor. Then it sprang up to mold itself into the form of a green-striped, teenage android boy. Who was trying very hard _not_ to let his complete terror get the best of him.

A tiny antenna grew from the side of Drew's head, and tuned itself to a secret, encrypted frequency. "I'm inside," he gulped, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. He examined the signage on the walls, and the regular rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving. "Room … twenty-nine eighteen, it looks like. Spare Parts and Supplies. Nobody's in here, but I can hear voices coming from the corridor."

"Got you – you're right where you're supposed to be," answered a reassuring female voice. "And they didn't see you come in; I killed the sensors in the room thirty seconds ago. Commander Smytus just landed on the roof, so most of the guard drones are distracted right now. Oh yeah, and I planted a rumor on the military channels that he was coming to conduct a surprise inspection. Y'know, just to mess with their heads," she giggled. "Looks like everything is a _go_."

"Lucky me," he half-chuckled, rubbing his hands with nervous energy as he pondered his sanity.

"Drew …" – the tone of the voice grew instantly serious, and softened with concern – "… _please_, be careful. There are drones and mantis everywhere. If something goes wrong …"

"Hey, I'm inside of Cluster Military Headquarters, surrounded by two hundred thousand troops and half the Cluster fleet. What could _possibly_ go wrong?" His mouth flinched with a tiny smile, imagining how she must have been rolling those cute dark eyes of hers on the other end of the link. "I'll be careful, Ally. I promise."

"Good luck," she said, then the link fell silent. They'd need to keep radio silence from this point on.

He took advantage of his moment of solitude to corral his racing thoughts. Yesterday, he'd sworn that he'd rather be anywhere in the universe other than fifth period Physics. _Be careful what you wish for, nimrod,_ he groaned to himself. Well, Ally and the other underground leaders had told him this job was supposed to be extremely important. Then again, that's what they always told him. _Okay, just like the plan. C'mon, Nabholtz. In and out, three minutes tops. Easy as pie. You've done stuff like this before._

A wave of distortion washed over him, squashing and stretching his body like chrome-colored plasticine. Long feelers reached up from his forehead to form antennae. A moment later, Drew assumed the plain rust-red coloration of a standard-issue, dome-headed military roach-drone. The Cluster Empire was filled with millions of them; nobody was going to notice one more. _Hopefully._

He slid the door open with one of his slim, angular claws, and slipped into the brightly-lit steel corridor. A thin smattering of roach-drones shuffled by in either direction, some giving him a brisk nod, others a rough synthesized greeting. Every robotic eye and surveillance camera pointing his way felt like a searing laser, a blazing spotlight on the verge of piercing his disguise and sounding the alarm … but nobody gave him a second look. Drew dodged around a robotic mail cart and ambled down the hallway, trying to look like he actually belonged there, and took note of the passing room numbers with quick glances out of the corner of his now-beady eyes.

He pulled the mission folder from his memory banks, and opened the stolen schematic of the pyramid's twenty-ninth floor. Allison had copied the map during one of her frequent cyber-raids on the ClusterNet; it was downright spooky what she could get into with her assimilation-resistant hacking abilities. She could tell you what brand of gasket grease that Queen Vexus had for breakfast that morning. But there were still some ultra-secure computers on the ClusterNet that even she couldn't crack into. And one of them was about twenty yards away.

It was impossible to miss the door to Data Lab Three. It was the only one with two heavily-armed guards standing at either side of it. Actually, the guards' arms _were_ 'arms' in the literal sense; which was to say, they were rapid-charge fifteen-megawatt UV lasers. The guards didn't look much for friendly banter. So Drew just breezed up to the glowing keypad next to the door and started tapping.

If they'd changed this entry code in the past six hours, he was _royally_ screwed. His black pincer tapped in the last of the thirty-two digits. For a horrible second, nothing happened, as if the door was thinking it over. Was that guard nudging his laser-arm in his direction? Suddenly, with an electronic chirp, the door split open, admitting him inside with a cool, comforting puff of overpressure. But he still felt like he was being impaled with a billion needles. He wasn't used to this stuff yet. He doubted he ever would be.

The walls were lined with phone-booth sized glass tubes, filled with gurgling yellow fluid that kept the powerful computer cores inside constantly bathed in a stream of coolant. Rivers of thick black cables snaked their way to a donut of consoles at the center of the room. Twenty roach-drones tended to the equipment which cared for the hideous superbrains, while scientist droids worked efficiently at their consoles, running invasion simulations and designing new terror toys for the Empire. Three of the consoles were unused at the moment. Drew only needed one. _Look like you belong here_. Well, he _did_ look like he belonged there. And he'd used the correct entry code. As far as anyone knew, he was just another throw-away roach-drone running some mindless errand.

He walked to the console, becoming _acutely_ aware that there was only one door leading in or out of the room. It already felt like that door was ten miles away. The teenage trespasser sat down in front of a large flat screen, avoiding eye contact with the robots on either side of him. A blinking cursor prompted him to enter his unit designation and authorizing password. He had something else in mind, though.

As non-chalantly as he could manage, the faux roach-drone raised his claw to the console's input socket. With an imperceptible shimmer of silver-green, it morphed it into a customized plug, and made a direct connection with the circuitry behind the console. Hundreds of millions of nano-computers pulsed inside of Drew's synthetic body, making short work of the security firewalls. The flat screen burst to life with full system access, and filled with a rapid-fire series of charts and windows, complete with schematics, base layouts, camera locations, fleet deployment, police records … a virtual all-you-can-eat buffet of Cluster secrets. Fighting to keep his nervousness in check, Drew pulled up a "shopping list" of files that Allison had prepared for him, and he started downloading.

He unconsciously drummed his other claw on the console, trying hard to look like _anything_ other than an enemy of the state. The scientist-droid next to him was noisily hammering at his keyboard with four set of appendages. He paused, noticing the volumes of data flying by on Drew's screen. The droid's bulbous head turned slowly towards him, giving him an interrogating look.

Drew cracked a weak smile. "Just, ah, checkin' on the old fantasy football team," he croaked.

The droid turned its head slowly back towards its own work, and resumed its assault on the keyboard.

Resisting the urge to gasp with relief, Drew returned his attention to the sixteen downloads he was currently pulling into his body's computers. While each of them contained a bounty of information for the underground, he still hadn't found the primary target. The file that someone decided was important enough to risk an insanely dangerous stunt like this …

_Bleep._ A new window popped up on the screen, and Drew allowed a small smile to tug at his insectoid mouth. _Encrypted file found for Project "Anywhere Cannon". Commencing download …_

_Yes!_ This was the big important _whateveritwas_ that had everyone in the underground in an absolute panic. It _must_ have been important, because the operating system suddenly thought it was strange that a mere drone was requesting a copy of it. Drew's nano-computers told the console, using an obscure dialect of binary computer lingo, to shut up and keep downloading. _Twenty percent complete …_

Now he was at his most vulnerable. But fortunately, the roach-drones and scientist droids seemed to be focusing their attention elsewhere. Some good luck, for a change. _Forty percent complete …_

He glanced at a clock readout on the console. He'd been inside the room for a little over four minutes, a little longer than they'd planned. _Sixty percent complete …_

There was a commotion on the other side of the door, and he heard the sharp clank of claws against chests. Voices in the hallway grew louder and nearer. What were the drones doing? The attitude of the robots seemed to change; there was a hint of tension in the air. Well, at least it was taking the attention away from him. _Eighty percent complete …_

_Stomp. Clank. Stomp._ The heavy door slid open. The drones in the room stood ramrod straight, and snapped their claws to their chests in perfect mechanical synchronization. Drew found that to be a bit bizarre … then his eyes shrank to the size of tiny, frozen pencil points as he realized what the other robots were doing. They were all _saluting_.

Commander Smytus blasted into Data Lab Three like a raging storm, brushing a few remaining globs of fluffy foam from his angular chassis. "… for the last time, I didn't call an inspection!" he roared, towering over a quivering drone like a hateful god. "And I don't care _how_ shiny your armor is!"

He was in an _especially_ foul mood. The drones recognized that mood instantly as a post-defeat tirade. None were foolish enough to point it out.

Smytus spun around melodramatically, and flung a clenched fist into the air. His fist blaster crackled with electric green energy; megalomania and madness danced in his eyes. Satisfied that he had commanded the full attention of everyone in the room, he addressed the drones with a martial fervor. "Now stop standing around like worthless piles of scrap, there's work to be done! My latest attack on Earth has … _softened up_ that insolent brat, XJ-9. Thanks to my brilliance, we now have a window of opportunity to eliminate that pig-tailed whelp, once and for all! The time has come to deliver the killing blow. Weeks of preparations are finally complete. Send out the orders!" He thrust out his broad chest, enjoying the sound of his own voice as it filled the lab. "Let history record today as the day of the beginning of the decline to the end of the human race, and the end of the beginning of the rise of the start of the beginning of the completion of the Cluster Empire!"

A couple of drones exchanged confused looks, unsure if they should clap or not. Smytus rolled his eyes and grumbled. "Today we blow up Earth real good," he growled. "For today we unleash the awesome, unstoppable, cosmos-shaking power of … THE ANYWHERE CANN …"

_Bleep!_ His monologue was rudely interrupted by an electric tone from one of the consoles.

Smytus _hated_ interruptions. "WHO WAS THAT!"

He glared in the direction of the pathetic rust-red roach-drone, the lone robot in the room who was _not_ standing and listening to his speech with rapt attention. That kind of insubordination from a lowly roach-drone was inexcusable. "Excuse me," he shouted, "am I bothering you? Do you have something more important to do that to listen to your Supreme Commander? Because if you _do_ …"

Something was odd. The red roach-drone seemed to have his lower right claw _plugged into_ the console with a strange, silver-green cable. And he was as nervous as an obsolete droid in a recycling yard. And there was a blinking message on the flat screen in front of him which read _Download Complete …_

Smytus drew his shoulders back, and dropped his fists to his sides, still softly crackling with lethal green plasma. "We need to have a talk, soldier," he snarled.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Two

* * *


	2. Part Time Job

A/N – Thanks for all the reviews, folks. Yes, as several of you have noticed, there was a lot of stuff in the first chapter that was "left over" from the first version of this story, but is being told in a fairly different way. And I think you can tell that I'm enjoying this version a lot more. Again, make sure you forget everything you read in the first version of the story! I think you'll see that things really start to take on a different feel in this chapter, and then the fun will _really_ start. A quick-heads up warning: this chapter is long, and very OC-heavy, for necessary plot reasons. Okay, where were we now … oh, that's right! Yipes! A cliffhanger!

* * *

The Anywhere Cannon

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Two – Part-Time Job

* * *

Commander Smytus bore down on Drew with all the pleasantness that a sledgehammer might show towards a nail. All sound in the room bled away, leaving only the obnoxious background gurgling of the supercomputer coolant tanks. Time slowed down and screamed into fast forward all at once; Drew's mind raced for options; and didn't come up with anything he particularly liked. A quick tactical scan of the hostile faces surrounding him tallied up twenty-one roach-drones, eight scientist-droids, two Mantis robots from the Secret Police, and of course, ol' Commander Chuckles himself. And _that_ wasn't even taking into account the swarms of guards who were waiting out in the hallway. Smytus leaned down and glared into Drew's phony drone-face like a Marine drill sergeant – the lummox was so top-heavy, Drew was briefly worried he was going to fall on top of him – and flexed his massive steel fist, as if he were imagining how satisfying it would feel to rip his head off. Bolts of green plasma energy, licking over the claw-like fingers, bathed the Commander's features in an appropriately maniacal light. All that was missing was a flash of lightning in the background.

Twin energy-blades snapped out of the claw with a _hiss_, mere inches away from Drew's mouth. "Identify yourself, drone," growled Smytus. "What's your serial number?"

Drew unplugged his hand from the Cluster computers, muttered a silent prayer, and folded all four of his arms with a forced nonchalance. _Okay, here we go._ "M-m-my serial number? Oh, uh … sure, it's, _ummm_ … it's five … four … three … two … one."

"What _kind_ of stupid serial number is …"

While Drew had been busy downloading files, he'd made sure to find time to _upload_ one too; a nasty little virus that did but one simple thing. It picked one of the data consoles at random, and increased the voltage running into that console's circuitry by a factor of fifty. That was at least quadruple what was necessary to trigger a complete overload. In a flash of acrid blue smoke, the console to the right of Smytus exploded with a fountain of electrical sparks, tossing a hapless scientist-droid to the floor in a fit of uncontrollable motor spasms. And the bedlam began.

Drew leapt back from the startled Smytus, stretching into an impossibly flexible loop as he doubled the size of his fist. He plowed it into the dumbstruck face of another roach, but that was the only free shot he got. Alerted to the treachery, the Cluster drones snapped into combat mode, and came at the "rogue drone" with a cyclone of wild roundhouse punches – yet none of them landed a single blow, as Drew's roach body contorted itself into half a dozen surreal shapes. Frustrated, they deployed their taser weapons and circled him, powering up for a crippling attack …

And _that_ was when he dropped his disguise. A shimmer of silver-green flashed across his body, reverting his face to normal, and morphing two of his forearms into mono-molecular blades. Three quick slash-attacks sent severed robot arms scattering across the floor, leaving stumps that gushed with messy streams of jet-black oil.

"The _nanodroid!_" bellowed Smytus, near-incandescent with rage. "Close the security door! All troops, switch to paralyzer rays and fire at will!"

_Like, Zoiks!_ Drew squashed down to duck a salvo of green plasma blasts, and saw six inches of reinforced titanium plating began to seal off the only exit. _Oh, crap … desperation time_. The drones lined up to block his path, like the defensive line of a pro football team. But instead of charging, the silver-green intruder grabbed the wounded drone in front of him, and harshly spun him around to point at the smoldering computer console. The console was still tossing up white-hot electrical sparks … and the drone's severed arm-stump was still spurting out a pressurized spray of oil …

Which was eagerly ignited by the sparks, converting the horrified drone into an involuntary flamethrower. Globs of flame splattered across floor tiles slick with oil from the other damaged robots. New fires heaved up thick curtains of dirty gray smoke. Panicking roach-drones ignited like roman candles, their shrieks drowned out by the banshee wail of fire alarms. The room descended into chaos and blind fighting. More shots of green plasma cut through the smoke, crackling inches away from Drew's head; he curled up into a shiny ball, using his momentum to fling his fire-spewing victim along the floor like a curling stone. The unfortunate drone slid all the way to the exit – as the security door came down on him with a sickening _crunch_. The thrashing robot body jammed the door, and kept a sliver of daylight visible. Drew unfolded himself and bolted for the exit …

_Ka-thunk._ With a second effort, the heavy security door slammed shut, slicing the luckless drone in two and sealing off the only escape. Drew doubled back, dodged a trio of plasma blasts, and … _pow_, walked right into a powerful right cross that came out of the smoke and spun his head around. A Mantis robot stepped through the flames and enthusiastically followed up with a pair of body blows. The Mantis activated his taser-claw and jammed it into Drew's torso … just as the emergency nozzles dropped from the ceiling and discharged a shower of fire-fighting foam. The Secret Police-bot lost his footing and collapsed into a heap. Smoke wafting from his chest, Drew grew a set of treads on the soles of his feet, staggered backwards around another blinded roach, and looped another blast of plasma, all while frantically searching the room for another exit. And then he remembered the bank of supercomputer tank-booths that lined the long wall.

Another explosion erupted from the damaged console. More plasma blasts cratered the floor tiles. A bonzai yell pierced the roiling black smoke, and a charging roach-drone leapt at Drew with taser-claws crackling. _Schwerrrp, schwerrrp._ To the Cluster robot's dismay, his victim morphed his pliable body into a tightly coiled, silver-green spring. Drew used his attacker's own momentum to catapult the drone across the room, and slam it into one of the glass cylinder tanks. The tank shattered spectacularly, sending a yellow tidal wave of glycerol coolant rushing across the floor.

As the Cluster robots slipped in the glycerol, groped through the smoke, burned in the flames, and got blasted by each other's cross-fire, the silver-green thief leapt across the room like a stream from a fire hose, landing next to the remains of the supercomputer chamber. He yanked out the fragile remains of the computer core and tossed it aside; he was only interested in the glass tank. A tank that had been filled with flowing liquid coolant. Because _liquid_ meant that there had to be some kind of plumbing …

He sighed with relief when he spotted the outflow drain at the bottom of the tank. He glanced up at the circus of insanity that raged in Data Lab Three, and couldn't resist giving Smytus a little smile. Then a shimmering wave coursed through his body. He transformed into a pillar of thick, silver-green ooze … and poured himself down the drain.

By then the fires were out. The drones turned as one to their furious commander, who was now coated with a fluffy layer of chemical fire-foam for the second time in ten minutes. Smytus wiped his eyes clean, and slammed a fist into the remains of the smoking console next to him.

"I hate nanobots," he said darkly. "I really, _really_ hate nanobots."

* * *

The new guy's lamp attachment flickered for a second, then settled down to throw shaky, exaggerated shadows on the rust-flecked walls of the service tunnel. Greaser was another teenaged robot, enthusiastic but lacking in experience, and his servos were beginning to get a bit jittery. Allison told him to dial down the brightness to quarter-level; it was all she really needed to pick out the correct circuit in the crowded switchbox. And it was the most illumination that she dared allow, just in case some unmarked spy-bot or random maintenance camera might take notice of an unusual glow, deep beneath the streets of the Cluster capital. She wondered if thinking this way was making her paranoid. Well, if you were going to be a free-thinking robot on Cluster Prime, paranoia was an essential survival skill. She patted her hip, reassuring herself that her laser pistol was at the ready and fully charged. What was that old human saying she'd learned? _Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you._ And they were most _definitely_ out to get her – along with the rest of the fledgling Cluster Underground.

A third robot peered impatiently over her shoulder, his weathered military markings just visible in the diminished light. "He is _late_," he sneered, drumming his fingers against his tan-colored arm. "_As usual._ That's what we get for using an amateur."

"Amateur? No _way_, dude!" protested Greaser. "He's the _nanodroid_! I mean, he's like, totally … the … whatever the _opposite_ thing of amateur is, dude! … _uhh_ … isn't he?"

Allison groaned, not even bothering to make eye contact with the former Cluster War Fleet officer. She focused her attention on her arm-computer's display, which was eavesdropping on the comm channels in an exposed bundle of fiber optics. "You know, you're absolutely right, Polaris," she said, sarcasm dripping from her every word. "In fact, next time we need somebody to infiltrate a heavily guarded military base to steal top secret material … I'll send _you_. 'Kay?"

Captain Polaris sulked, shooting at nasty look at Greaser as a lone chuckle escaped his voicebox … then their attentions were grabbed by a faint rattling vibration that echoed down the length of the tunnel.

Greaser jumped with a hint of panic, with visions of Cluster shock troops dancing in his head, but Allison kept her composure and checked her ClusterNet connection to see if any drone units were operating in the tunnel system. The rattling grew steadily in volume, drawing closer and closer to their position. And still she couldn't see anything, even with her low-light-enhanced vision turned on … then she realized that the sound wasn't coming from the tunnel itself. It was coming from one of the many iron pipes that ran along the length of the tunnel wall. And now it was coming from directly over their heads, where a valve on the pipe began to slowly turn itself open …

And a silver-green blob squirted out of the pipe, to form a sheepishly grinning face. "Ahh … somebody here order a pizza?" quipped Drew.

Polaris and Greaser registered amazement at Drew's unconventional appearance, but Allison just shook her head and groaned. "You are very, _very_ late, Mister," she scolded, as she detached her arm from the tunnel cables. She plunked her fists on her hips with an annoyed _clank_, tapping her foot as Drew slopped the rest of his syrupy body out of the pipe. "What'd you do, stop at the Galleria on the way back for a silicone smoothie?"

A playfully wounded look flashed on his face as the final touch-up wave washed over his body. "Sorry about that, chief," he said, gesturing towards the overhead piping. "I kind of had to take the scenic route back …"

"Oh, wow … it's really the nanodroid! _Dude!_" Greaser was bursting with wide-eyed amazement; there were a lot of wild stories flying around the ClusterNet about the strange shiny liquid dude. "Oh, wow, like … you are so _totally_ all squishy and melty and stuff! _Whoooa, dude!_ Wow, like, I heard stuff about you, y'know? Like, crazy stuff? But everybody hears stuff, y'know? And I'm figuring like _shyaaa, right_ … But then the pipe was all like _clank clank_, and I was all like _oh noooo_, but then you were all like _squirt squirt,_ and I was all like _noooo waaaaay_ …"

Drew glanced at Ally, speechless. She simply rolled her eyes. "He's new."

"Oh, for the love of … stop your yammering, you idiot!" The tall form of Captain Polaris pushed his way past the gushing teenager; as a former military officer, he wasn't used to working with civilians. Fleet officers were like an aristocracy on Cluster Prime; they had a arrogant sense of entitlement, and often behaved like royalty themselves. But while Polaris was difficult to work with, he'd been one of the few Cluster officers who had sought to join the Underground. _And_ he captained a star cruiser with a loyal crew, also willing to join the Underground's cause. Like many others, they'd learned the awful truth about Queen Vexus' evil ways when Allison had made her infamous video broadcast, after the Cluster Dawn Fleet was defeated by XJ-9. Vexus no longer had a working mind-control network, to make her subjects forget what they'd learned … so she'd countered with a massive propaganda campaign, saying that the video was a fake, and that the _notorious, treacherous_ LSN-1482 was the evil one, as much an enemy to the Cluster as XJ-9 was. Allison was a liar and a traitor, a danger to the Empire. The Queen's lies had worked almost as well as the old mind-control helmets had. Very few robots _wanted_ to believe that their leader was evil, even if they had begun to suspect it. And many of those that believed it were too afraid to do anything _about_ it.

Polaris grabbed Drew by the arm and spun him around. "Did you get it? Did you get all the files? Did you get the _Anywhere Cannon_ file? Or did you manage to botch that up?"

A small bubble formed in Drew's throat, and he had to concentrate to clear up his voice circuits. "Uhhh, sure … I-I got everything you asked for. I got it all stashed away inside." He knew that Polaris didn't think much of him, or his abilities, and the big wedge-chested robot intimidated him a little. Well, _more_ than a little. He always felt about two feet tall when Polaris was around. "So … what's the deal with this 'Anywhere Cannon'? You make it sound like the end of the world."

"It just might be," growled the towering robot. "At least, the end of _your_ world. I don't think you appreciate just how serious this is."

Allison took a blank data crystal out of her shoulder satchel, and handed it to Drew, who plugged it into his chest. "So it's some kind of super gun?" he asked, as copied over the stolen files.

"It's not just a _super gun_," snapped Polaris, not bothering to hide a tinge of contempt.

"_Whooaaa_, so it's a like a … _mega super triple mondo-humongous_ gun?" asked Greaser.

Polaris sighed deeply, as if he were preparing to give a lecture to a group of toasters. "It is one of Queen Vexus' most secret projects, you bolt-head. I learned about it just before I joined the Underground. It is a combination of a powerful anti-proton cannon, and a giant hyperspace portal. A normal cannon has to be transported to the target, say, by mounting it on a starship that flies close enough to get within range. But the Anywhere Cannon doesn't have to move. It _won't have to leave_ its home base."

"Oh, _boy_ … hyperspace portal!" Allison frowned as the terrible epiphany came to her; another ton of worry had just been dumped on her shoulders. "All Vexus' goons have to do is open a portal to another planet … then fire the cannon right _through the portal_! _Ohhhhhh_, sprockets. That's nasty."

"There would be _no_ defense against it," continued Polaris. "You could set the co-ordinates for the Earth's core, fire the cannon, and blow up the planet from the _inside out_. And the Cannon could be fired from _anywhere_ in the galaxy." He paused to let _that_ little nugget sink in. "I know for a fact it's nowhere even _close_ to Cluster Prime. Nobody has _any_ idea where it is. The location of the Anywhere Cannon is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the whole Empire."

"Well, not anymore, it isn't," said Drew, with a wan smile. He unplugged the data crystal and dropped it into Polaris' outstretched claws.

But if Drew was expecting a thank-you, he received only a snort from the captain as a reply. "It should take me a few hours to decrypt this file. It contains a full set of blueprints, along with the location of the Anywhere Cannon's secret base. Now my crew and I can destroy it, before the queen's drones finish construction. Believe me, if Vexus gets her claws on a weapon like this, she will destroy the Earth, and any other planet that doesn't bow down to her. She would rule the galaxy unopposed, and then we would be stuck with her as our tyrant, until the end of time. The robots of Cluster Prime would _never_ be truly free."

"Yeah … _plus_, it _would_ kind of suck for the billions of people living on those planets that get blown up," added Drew.

"_Ohhhhh yeahhhh_," said Greaser, as if he'd just heard a deep, philosophical secret of the cosmos.

Drew was beginning to wonder about this new guy. Well, the Underground needed everyone they could get. "All right, well, umm … you got your files … anything else I can do to help out?"

"I seriously _doubt_ it," sneered Polaris, focusing his attention on the data crystal.

"Knock it off, Polaris," growled Allison, deliberately omitting his old title of _Captain_. She put up with a lot of the aristocrat act from him, but it was time to remind the Cluster Academy graduate just what his place was nowadays. The former LSN droid adjusted the equipment belts that crisscrossed her lavender torso, and folded her arms, giving her subordinate a glare that would have stripped a layer of paint off a drone's hide. "In case you've forgotten, we're all supposed to be a team here, okay? Drew did his part, and now it's time for you to do yours. _If_ you think you can _handle_ it." Polaris stood a good three feet taller than Allison, but the force of her steely gaze served him appropriate notice – she was the boss. She was the face of the Underground, the one that popped up on video screens during the pirate broadcasts, the one who drove Vexus nuts. And deep inside his memory banks, he knew that he owed his own freedom to Allison. And maybe even a little bit to that silver-green freak job, too.

"Okay, let's get everything cleaned up," ordered Allison, satisfied that her message had been delivered. She stuffed a coil of optical cable back into her satchel. "No trace that we were ever here. I want to be moving in two minutes." Polaris and Greaser acknowledged her order with a nod, and began to pack up their temporary lights and anti-surveillance equipment.

Drew heaved a sigh of relief, dropping the voltage levels in his nano-circuits to calm himself down – sort of the android equivalent of post-adrenaline-rush crash, now that another Underground mission was safely in the bag. Damage information and vital statistics displayed on the inside of his eyeball; he needed some time to recuperate, and let his trillions of nanobots perform a little self-repair. He slid into a sitting crouch on the floor of the tunnel, found a power cable coursing with refreshing alternating current, and plugged his finger in for a recharge.

A set of light metallic footfalls echoed towards him, and Drew looked up with a smile. Allison dropped into a sitting position next to his, as gracefully as she could manage with two equipment belts slung over her shoulders. She readjusted the laser pistol with an awkward chuckle, and looped her hands around her knees, trying to let some of the stress flow out of her circuits. They just exchanged tired smiles for a few seconds; then with a soft _whishhh_ of servos and actuators, her shoulders loosened, as if she was casting off a heavy backpack at the end of a jungle hike. Running the Cluster Underground took a lot out of her. The flinty resolve in her eyes stashed itself away, to be replaced by the haunting dark pools that Drew saw in his dreams at night. "Don't worry about Polaris," she said, nudging him with a playful elbow. "He treats everyone that way. I've been dealing with jerks like him ever since I worked back at Link-Systems-Networks. He thinks he's Cog's gift to robots."

Drew half-laughed, and gave her an impish smirk. "Well, all things considered, he's actually one of the _nicer_ Cluster robots I've run into today."

"I can imagine. So … how did it go? On the base?"

His eyes flicked back and forth evasively. "Eh, you know … snuck in, snuck out. No big deal."

"_Riiiight._" She didn't call him on the obvious lie. She had a good idea of what these missions must have been like. It had been dangerous enough in the beginning, when he was simply stealing supplies for her and her fellow rebels. With every success, the missions kept getting more dangerous … but it was _such_ an advantage for the Underground to have a shape shifter on its roster. Any responsible leader would take advantage of a resource like Drew, and he had been more than willing to help in any way he could. She kept sending him out on these missions … and her microchips painfully counted the milliseconds until he came back. Allison slid herself against his silvery chest, and nuzzled her smooth metal cheek against his neck. As if to reassure herself that he was physically there, and still in one piece. Her eyes flitted up to meet his. "Thanks for not getting yourself blasted," she said.

He wrapped a silver-green arm around her shoulders, and gave her a firm squeeze. "Who says I _didn't_?"

"Stop it, _jerk_," she laughed, returning the embrace. When you were a fugitive from Cluster Imperial justice, moments like this had to be cherished, savored … and stored away on optical disk. "Someday, during one of your visits, we'll have to try something wild and crazy, like … dinner and a movie."

"No, really, it's okay … all the couples back on Earth hang out in dark, rusty underground pipes. No, seriously. You have to make a reservation four weeks in advance just to get one of the good ones." He snickered at the lame joke, then wondered if he'd just said something incredibly stupid. After all, when the day was over, he'd go home to sleep in a nice, clean tub with a roof over of head. But Allison had to live underground like some robotic animal, moving amongst the solvent sewers and the monorail tunnels and a dozen other subterranean chambers, always on the verge of being captured as she fought the impossible fight against Queen Vexus – and all while having everyone else look up to her! He didn't know how she handled the pressure. There were teens he knew back in Tremorton who thought that 'stress' meant matching your shoes to your belt on Picture Day.

She leaned forward, and a wicked, seductive smile spread across the ghostly outline of her face. A slim finger started to slowly trace one of the green stripes on his chest. "Sewer pipes, huh? So tell me … just what do human teenagers _do_, when they get together … in a dark … isolated … lonely place?"

He grinned, and brushed a strand of lavender hair-foil out of her eyes. "Well, why don't you just … use your imagination?" he smirked, sliding an arm around her back. _Dang_, he could feel her turbines pounding with excitement, spinning faster and faster. And he could stare into those eyes all day. Sure, it might be one of the more … _unconventional_ romantic arrangements that you could possibly imagine, but Ally was so totally worth it.

He closed his eyes, dropped his lips to hers, and …

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP 

They clanked foreheads, then realized that the chirping tone was accompanied by flashing lights – coming from Drew's eyes. _Aw, crap._ He flowed his hand into a video panel, which displayed the time …

"Oh, crap. _Ohhhh_, crap crap _megacrap_, I'm late!" He scrambled to his feet, and helped Allison to hers, while she massaged the fresh dent just above her left eye. Drew was a seething cauldron of frustration. "Ally, I'm _so_ sorry, but … _arrghh_, my lunch break is up, and I've gotta go back on shift for three hours, and I've already been late twice this month, and I'm skating on thin ice with the _stupid_ assistant manager as it is … _ooooh_, that Leslie, he's such a pimple-faced little Nazi …"

"Don't worry about it," she sighed. She knew she wasn't the only one with unusual circumstances in this relationship. "It's just the way things have to be, for a while." She gave him a peck on the cheek.

And with a double-clap of her hands, Allison stowed away the lovestruck robot girl, and brought back the steel-spined Underground Leader. It was time for all of them to get on the move anyway. Polaris had to make his way back to a pre-arranged contact point, where he would reunite with his crew and prepare for a raiding mission to take out the Anywhere Cannon. And Allison would oversee intelligence and logistics, and the hundreds of other little things she had to worry about on a day to day basis. Never a dull moment in the Cluster Underground.

She gestured to Greaser, who rummaged inside a duffel bag, and hauled out a brick-shaped chunk of high-tech equipment that had obviously seen better days. The lower half of it was held together by two loops of duct tape. Greaser handed it over to Drew, still a little awestruck at being in the presence of the mysterious nanodroid, and gave him a thumbs-up. "All right, Nano-Dude … your teleporter is all set to go. _Shyaaa_, I replaced the bad circuit, got it all cleaned up with, _y'know_, those little cotton swab thingies … and that WD-40 stuff, y'know? Uh, _yeah_, and we totally installed a new power pack with a full change on it. _Sweeeet!_ Dude, those things are, like, really hard to find."

"Yeah, I've gotten a lot more mileage out of this thing than it was ever designed for." Drew checked the settings on the coordinate panel; a hyperspace-vortex generator was something you made sure to double-check, every time you used it. "Good job, Greaser. Thanks."

"You're like _totally_ welcome, dude." The Cluster teen grinned through the slots of his mouth-grill. "Y'know, I just wanna say, that, it was so _totally_ excellent working with you today … y'know … 'cause freedom rocks, dude! And the Underground totally _rules_, man! _Yeaaaahh_! And … uhh … y'know, now that I think about it, you actually did most of the work, and … _uhhhh_ … well, I guess you really did all the work … _uhhh_ … well, I carried the bags."

Even though she was in "leader mode", Allison had a hard time suppressing a laugh at the flustered look on Drew's face. "Look at it this way, 'nanodroid'," she chuckled. "Somebody thinks you're cool."

* * *

Two high school students ambled casually into the men's room, debating the relative hotness of the girls who were hanging out at the Tremorton Mall that day …

And were knocked on their backs by a mysterious, chittering flash of light that erupted with the brilliance of a signal flare, and whipped up a sudden tornado of toilet paper and newspaper sections. The mall-goers dove for cover under the restroom sinks, probably from the shock of seeing a hyperspace portal blossom into existence where the middle stall should have been. Drew bolted out of the vortex like a race house breaking out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby. Shaking a stubborn scrap of TP from his heel, he exploded out of the restroom and ran out into the crowded mall food court – nearly knocking over an angry mother and her tray of jumbo pretzels. The silver-green android weaved through the chaos of afternoon shopping, through the congestion of senior citizens in front of Donut Palace, past the screaming kids that ran around the ball pit – and the annoying guy in the cactus costume who was passing out churro samples in front of Senor Tacos. _Stupid place would have to be the furthest one from the bathroom_ –

A tall, gangly teenager with a brush cut and a clip-on tie was waiting for him in front of the red-and-yellow façade of Wonder Weenie. "You're late, Nabholtz!" he shouted, in a voice that squeaked like sneakers on a gymnasium floor. "Your shift started four minutes ago!"

_Aw, fer_ – "I'm sorry, sir!" babbled Drew, as he frantically jumped behind the counter, knocking over a straw dispenser. "I know I'm late, sir! It … it was an emergency, sir, it won't happen again! Sir!"

"Oh I know it won't … and do you know why? Because the next time will be the last time! Do I make myself clear, Nabholtz?" A greasy forehead, textured with whiteheads, furrowed to signal its thorough displeasure. "Now get your silver butt on register!"

"Right away, _Leslie_," Drew grumbled to himself in a mocking singsong. He trudged toward the cash register bereft of any enthusiasm or dignity, entered his shift code, and heaved his shoulders with a deep sigh. "Good afternoon, welcome to Wonder Weenie … there's nothing Teeny about a Wonder Weenie. May I take your order …"

"_Uniform!_" screamed the pimply voice of authority.

_Sigh._ A shimmering wave rolled over the surface of Drew's body, replacing his silver-green complexion with a bright red-and-yellow polo shirt – adorned with a cute dancing weenie on the pocket. And a large mass rose up from the top of his head … which morphed into a ridiculous hat, shaped like a two-foot-long frankfurter. He turned back to his first customer. "Sorry about that, sir. Now … welcome to Wonder Weenie, would you like to try our two-for-one Weenie Wonderland Combo today …"

But his canned sales pitch was interrupted by a stream of ketchup that slammed into his face. He wiped his eyes clean … to see the chiseled jaw of Don Prima standing in front of his register, with a trio of Tremorton High students laughing like hyenas behind him.

"Oh, _sorry_ about that," sneered Don, milking the laugh for all he could get. "I was bringing this ketchup bottle back to be refilled … but I guess it wasn't empty after all, was it? _Weenie Boy_?" Fresh guffaws of laughter rang out, as thick dollops of tomatoey goodness slowly dripped from Drew's nose.

Leslie glared at him, and his shoulders wilted. "I'll get the mop," he groaned. _Three hours to go._

* * *

Continued in Chapter Three

* * *


	3. Is That Too Much To Ask?

A/N – Thanks for the continued reviews, folks! I'm not getting as many as I did for the first version of this story; maybe folks assumed I ditched it for good? _Anyhoo._ The important thing is, yes, I am having more fun writing this version. Glad you liked the members of the Cluster Underground (they're only minor characters, but Greaser was fun to write.) And yes, it just didn't feel like a CoyoteLoon story unless I was tormenting Drew somehow. All right, back to the action, flying through the skies of Tremorton …

* * *

The Anywhere Cannon

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Three – Is That Too Much to Ask?

* * *

Tuck grinned with pure, unblemished joy as he watched his home town flash by a thousand feet beneath his beaming face; from his vantage point high up in the clouds, all of the buildings looked like little toy models, and all the people looked like ants, and all the ants looked like … well, he couldn't actually _see_ the ants, but he figured that if he _could_, they'd look pretty darn small. The thrill of flight was sending him to dangerous levels of over-stimulation. "It's all so _obvious_ to me now!" he shouted, smacking himself in the forehead. "That's how come you're so good at fighting robots, Jenny … it's the _rocket jets!_ Tactical advantage, superior maneuverability, enhanced view of the battlefield … whenever those Cluster losers come around, itchin' for a fight … you just fire up the old pigtails and _Pow! Kablam! Zoom!_" He churned the wind with his fists, pantomiming a Kung-Fu routine he'd seen on one of his favorite Saturday morning cartoon shows.

"_Careful!_" screamed Jenny, as her fidgeting passenger sent them twisting around in the air like an errant bottle rocket. She nimbly re-stabilized the gimbals on her pigtails, then shot Tuck a nasty glare. He was strapped into her safety harness, a child carrier that deployed from her torso and held him to her metal body like a bomb slung under the belly of a fighter jet. It had seemed like a safer way to carry him, instead of forcing him to cling to the edge of her booster-jet wings. Unfortunately, now his arms and legs were free to act out the action scenes playing in his all-too-vivid imagination. "Will you stop squirming around like that? _Aughhh!_ It's like trying to fly with a bucking bronco strapped to my stomach!"

"Of course, the problem is figuring out a way to get _me_ to fly," Tuck wondered aloud, completely oblivious to anything that Jenny had just said. His mind was racing with engineering possibilities, most of which involved construction paper and white glue. "We could just use one of your Mom's jet-packs! Oh, no, wait … she locked those down in the vault, after I flew one through the kitchen window. I know! We could just _unscrew_ your pigtails, and bolt them onto the sides of my football helmet! So what size screw do you use, Jenny … half-inch or three-eighths?"

She instinctively grabbed her precious pigtails. "Nobody's getting _near_ my head with a screwdriver! You can just forget about …"

"You're right," the little fellow interrupted, "on second thought, I think we should just stick with the jet-packs. You can sneak into your Mom's underground vault and 'borrow' one for me! But we'd better hurry if we want to make it to the Goop Zone in time. Let's see, registration starts at …"

Tuck pulled the tournament brochure out of his pocket, apparently forgetting that, at that moment, they were flying well over one hundred and fifty miles per hour. At that speed, the rushing slipstream grabbed the brochure out of his hands in an instant … and twisted it around crazily, until it peeled back and slapped right over Jenny's face. Suddenly blinded, the robot girl lost her visual bearings, and started spinning in a drunken helix as she grasped at the glossy paper covering her eyes. She yanked the brochure free just in time to see the towering spire of the KTRM radio antenna rushing towards her at an insane speed. With a gut-twisting, last-second burst of thrust, she banked into a tight turn, averting disaster. She gave Tuck a wild-eyed glare, her poor wires frazzled with frustration …

And he snatched the brochure back from her, giving her a scolding look in return. "Hey, you almost lost my entry form, Jenny! You really should be more careful. Now, about that registration time …"

"_Doi …_" – she smacked herself in the forehead, and silently counted to ten – "… Tuck, will you please forget about the stupid registration time? I'm not …"

"I see what you mean," he interrupted _again_, "registration still isn't for a whole hour, yet. But I want to get there in time to get in some practice on the ol' firing range!" And before Jenny even realized what the little tyke was doing, he hauled his MegaSoaker 400 water cannon out of his backpack … and let loose with a volley of enthusiastic soaker fire, laying waste to an army of imaginary mechanical beasts. "Take that, robot scum!" shouted Tuck, imitating the sound of laser fire. "_Pchew-pchew-pchew-pchew-pchew-pchew-pchew-pchew …_"

Of course, Tuck's toy rifle wasn't filled with a laser cartridge, but as Jenny soon realized, it wasn't filled with _water_, either. She learned this because one of Tuck's liquid blasts got caught in the wind, and blew back into Jenny's face with a moist, slimy, _splat_. It was a sticky spray of "goop" (available for take-home purchase at the Goop Zone Store); a viscous, pale-green tacky syrup that felt uncomfortably similar to _human snot_.

"_Ewwwww!_" she shouted in disgust, as she once again corkscrewed through the skies over Tremorton. Sparks crackled around her face as the slimy Goop played havoc with her circuitry. Baffled citizens on the streets below must have wondered if Wakeman's robot had gone on the fritz again, as they watched her twist around in crazy spirals. Her temper barely in check, thin slots opened up just above her eyebrows, to deploy a pair of windshield wipers that quickly cleared her vision once again. Trailing a thin stream of green Goop slime, she cleaned off the rest of her face, and returned to level flight once more. She gave Tuck her Ultimate Glare of Death …

… To which he was blissfully ignorant. Either that, or he was trying to fight _anger_ with _cute_. "Man, what's the matter with you today?" he asked, cluelessly. "Fluid levels a little off?"

"That's – _it!_" she shouted.

With a neck-snapping lurch, Jenny twisted into a roll, and plunged into a power dive at half the speed of sound. They were finally back over their own neighborhood, and she could _not_ get rid of Tuck fast enough. She blasted towards the Carbunkle house like a re-entering ICBM warhead, making a wind shear that ripped the leaves off of every tree within a hundred-foot radius. And like she'd done countless times before, she pivoted her body and bumped up the thrust from her jets, turning what seemed doomed to be a crash landing into a feather-soft touchdown. Well, not so feather-soft this time; she jettisoned Tuck from her child-carrier at the same moment that her toes touched the grass. The young boy did a couple of somersaults before coming to a stop, spread-eagled next to a lawn gnome. For a moment, Jenny worried that she'd let her temper get the best of her …

"_Cool!_" shouted Tuck, as he popped to his feet. "What an awesome example of evasive maneuvers! So, what do you say we head over to your house and get that jet pack now?"

The moment passed. Some other time, she might have admired Tuck's persistence, but right now, he was just being a big pain in the servos. It was times like this she was grateful her robot sisters spent most of their time in hibernation. "Tuck. _Listen_ to me. I'm going to say this once. You can't use one of my Mom's jet packs. You can't disassemble my head for parts. And I wasn't trying to show you any combat maneuvers. I just wanted to get you home – and out of my hair – as fast as possible!"

He scratched his fingers through his messy black hair, puzzled. "But we _need_ the jet pack, so you can show me how to win the Bot Buster tournament at Goop Zone …"

He _still_ didn't get it. "No jet pack," she said in a scolding voice. "And no robot fighting lessons. And _no Goop Zone_."

Tuck grasped at his heart, mortified. In a flash, his eyes doubled in size, quivering like pools of water. His warbling lower lip seemed to drop to his belly button. He sheepishly looked up at the blue-and-white robot girl with the heart-wrenching innocence of a street urchin from a Dickens novel. "But … but I thought you were my _friend,_ Jenny_."_

"_Yeah, yeah, yeah,_" she said, folding her arms with a clank. "Not falling for _that_ again."

As quickly as he'd put on the charade, Tuck dropped it – somewhat annoyed that it hadn't worked. _She's getting wise to my good stuff_, he thought to himself. "C'mon, Jenny ol' buddy ol' pal," he said, giving her a playful punch in the hip. He grinned like a Times Square watch salesman. "It's just one little old afternoon! A few hours of your time! Down at the Goop Zone! Having fun! Helping _me_! Win a contest! Possibly by cheating!"

"Tuck, I've got _more important_ things to do," she huffed. "Weren't you listening earlier when Smytus and his goons were attacking the town? Wait … what am I saying? Of _course_ you weren't listening. He said that he was going to destroy Tremorton before the end of the day, for 'complete and total victory'. That means I have to get together with my Mom so we can prepare battle plans to defend the Earth!" That was a _bit_ of a fib; she had dozens of battle plans pre-programmed into her memory banks. But it did make for a plausible escape plan right about now.

"Ah, Smytus says a lot of stuff," said Tuck, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Jenny, _please_, if you don't help me out, then I can't win this tournament …"

He just wouldn't give up. "_What_ is so important about some silly Goop-shooting tournament?"

"Because I've never won _anything_ before," he whined, in a half-genuine ploy to regain her sympathy. Tuck clasped his hands behind his back, and kicked at a tuft of grass on the lawn. He was such a natural little con artist that it was hard to tell when he was actually upset, but now he seemed authentic in his tender little angst. "You see, everyone in town _knows_ you, Jenny. You're a _hero_." He snuck a glance out of the corner of one eye, and noticed that her face softened somewhat. "Didn't you see how they waved and cheered for you after you beat the Cluster robots today? Sure, some of them used to think you were a freaky robotic monster … " – _oops, she's giving me a dirty look, I need a save here_ – "… but the important thing is, they're cheering you _now_. You're _famous!_"

She gave him a cautious smirk. "Well, I suppose … when a girl saves the Earth a few dozen times, she does gain a little bit of … _heh-heh_ … street cred."

"And remember a couple of weeks ago," he continued, "when Brad saved everyone at the Goop Zone from that giant Tadzilla-Mutant Frog thing? He got his picture in the paper, and now he's famous, too!"

Jenny remembered the night well – the giant frog attack had coincided with the visit from the amazing intergalactic teenaged heroes that called themselves the Teen Team. A lot of drama had taken place at the Goop Zone that night, but in the end, Brad had used his wits to turn a two-hundred-foot tall frog monster into a pile of cinders. Even Misty had concluded that Brad was a hero. And he'd gotten his picture in the town's and the school's paper. Of course, he'd been acting like a big jerk ever _since_ then … she snapped her attention back to Tuck, trying to figure out what his angle was.

"I think I see," she smiled, giving Tuck a gentle pat on the head. "You see how cool it is to save people, to be a hero, like Brad and me … and you wish that you could be a hero too."

"Huh? Hero?" He brushed her hand aside with a chuckle. "The heck with that, I just want the fame! Tuck wants his fifteen minutes! I want to be loved by adoring crowds who wish nothing more than to shower me with endless love and gifts and attention! And maybe a shoe contract, too."

So much for any sympathy she'd temporarily felt for the little guy. She slowly shook her head. "Unbelievable."

"Now do you see, Jenny? If I win that tournament, I get my picture in the paper! I might even be on the TV news!" Tuck whipped himself into another frenzy of excitement, as his imagination filled with images of his face on T-shirts and magazine covers. "Everyone in school will know that I'm the Bot Buster champion! Everyone in the whole town will say my name and say it loud! C'mon, say my name, Tremorton! _Who's your daddy?"_ He finally calmed down long enough to take a few deep breaths. "So … how about it, Jenny?"

"Oh, brother," she moaned. She deployed a miniature crane-hook from her wrist, and picked Tuck up by the shirt collar, holding him like a bag of dirty diapers. Despite the little guy's pleading and protests, she rang the doorbell to the Carbunkle residence and let herself in the front door. Tuck twisted and squirmed, trying to wrench himself free from her robotic grasp. He tried last-minute pleading to con, bargain, and blackmail Jenny into helping him win the Goop Zone Tournament, but her patience had been fully expended by then. _Let Brad worry about taking care of him; he's his brother, after all._ She didn't see anyone in the modestly decorated living room, and worried briefly that nobody was home. Then she'd _really_ be stuck with the little brat. "Brad! Brad!" she called out. "Anyone home?"

"In the kitchen!" came the reply. He must've been grabbing a snack. Jenny trudged into the kitchen, still holding Tuck from her wrist-hook. Then her chemical sensors began to twitch. There was something … _different_ about the air inside the house. As a robot, she couldn't _smell_ like a human, but she could run a spectrograph analysis of an air sample, getting a much more accurate and reliable result. In the two steps it took her to reach the kitchen, her sensors identified the mysterious chemical that floated inside the Carbunkle house.

It was cologne. _Cheap_ cologne.

"_Pee-yew_," moaned Tuck, trying to wave the vapors away from his nose.

Brad was in the kitchen all right, but he wasn't eating. He was ironing the wrinkles out of a black acrylic sweater-vest, humming pleasantly to himself as squirted a jet of steam onto a stubborn crease. "Hey there, guys," he said, making casual conversation. "So what've you been up to all day?"

Jenny made a face, and deployed a small fan from her head to blow the noxious odors away. "What … smells like a pack of _wet dogs_ in here?"

"Oh, you like it?" grinned Brad, as he slipped the sweater-vest over his head. "That's just a little something I decided to put on for tonight, you know …" – he gave Jenny a snarky grin – "… for my _date_. You see, Jen, a date is when humans teenagers go out and have fun together …"

"I know what a _date_ is, thank you," she growled back, in a voice that dropped the temperature of the room by ten degrees.

"Oh, really?" teased Brad, with a smug little smirk. He was obviously feeling _very_ pleased about the evening he had lined up in front of him. "Hmm, I thought you might not actually _remember_, seeing as how it's been so long since you've actually _been_ on a date …"

"_Oooooh_," gasped Tuck. _Nasty!_ Brad and Jenny's prom date, after the Cluster Dawn attack, seemed like something from ancient history now. Since then, Tuck had watched them argue bitterly, break up, apologize, stay friends, date other people, and then start flirting with each other again, sometimes repeating the cycle over the course of a week. In other words, they acted like typical, fickle, flighty teenagers. It was enough to make him hope that he'd stop growing at age 10 (or as he often referred to it, the big _one-oh_). Although, as disgusting as the whole idea of dating was – _I mean, c'mon, cooties!_ – it sure did provide a bounty of entertainment.

"I've been on plenty of dates, _thank you_," Jenny snapped back, shooting Brad an evil glare. She plunked her fists on her hips, dropping Tuck onto the floor.

"Yeah … any dates that weren't part _dog_?" grinned Brad.

"_Ooooooh!_" Tuck squealed with delight. "Point, Brad!"

Jenny's pigtails quivered with anger; she'd taken a big hit socially in the aftermath of her relationship with Kenny. Then an evil grin came to her face. "So, another lucky girl gets to go out with you tonight? Wow, is she a blonde, brunette, redhead … or a _floor mop_?"

"_Oooooooooooh!_ Point, Jenny!" Tuck held a pair of fingers aloft, displaying the score.

Brad growled in aggravation; he was _never_ going to live down the horror movie drive-in incident. He grabbed a bottle of hair gel from the counter, and squirted a clear glob of muck into his coppery bangs. "For your information, _I_ shall be enjoying a super fancy dinner tonight with the lovely Kiki Tuscadero. If you'll recall, she is one of the _many_ grateful young ladies whose life _I_ saved at the Goop Zone a couple of weeks ago. _Yeahhh_, she dumped Don Prima so fast that it made his head spin."

Tuck groaned and rolled his eyes; as much as he hated to admit it, Brad was right. Ever since he'd become a hero by defeating the giant frog at the Goop Zone, he'd been dating a different girl every night. Sure, it was a stupid way to waste his fame … but at least he had the fame to waste! And if he wanted any chance of getting a little fame of his own … - "_Heyyyyy_, big brother!" he grinned, flashing his best con-man grin. "Looking good! Wow, someone's out to break some hearts tonight, huh?"

"It's the burden I must bear, Tucker," Brad smiled back, running his fingers through his hair. He ignored Jenny's pantomime of _gag me_, and draped an arm around his little brother. "Maybe someday, when you're a little older, I'll show you the tricks of the old _Love Game_. For example, girls love eating out at fancy restaurants. That's why I'm taking Kiki out to that new French place downtown, _Le Bistro Swankée Foo Foo_. I got a five dollar coupon out of the newspaper. I figure that should be enough to buy us some French fries. And cheeseburgers. The French love cheese, right? I figure they must have some _awesome_ cheeseburgers at that place. Oops! Sorry. I mean, _burgers a la fromage_ …"

"_Yeah yeah yeah_, sure …" – Tuck struggled to keep his smile pasted on – " … and hey, since you just happened to mention the Goop Zone … I was _wondering_ …"

Brad's 'Tuck Sense' started to tingle; he recognized that grin. That, and he saw the Goop rifle that Tuck was trying to hide behind his back. "_Yeaaaah?_"

Tuck idly scuffed his shoes on the floor, trying to look as innocent as possible. "I was wondering, maybe, since you're such a _great_ brother," – _too thick? Nah, this works on Brad every time_ – "and since you're such a big-time hero now, and since you've got the car tonight …"

"I'm _not_ taking you to Goop Zone, Tuck," Brad answered flatly.

"Awwwww, _c'mon!_" whined Tuck.

But his big brother just shook his head, thoroughly unmoved by Tuck's plight. "That's why I told you this morning to go bug Jenny and make _her_ take you."

"_What!_" shrieked Jenny, her pigtails nearly standing on end. "You mean _you_ sent this little pest out to tag along after me all day? He's been driving me nuts! And he won't take no for an answer! And …" – she suddenly paused, as another, more maddening thought came to her. She pointed an accusing finger at Tuck. "You mean I wasn't your _first choice_?"

Now their voices escalated into a chaotic three-way shout-fest, with Jenny insisting that she was too busy with her world-saving duties, Brad insisting that he was going to be late for his big romantic date, and Tuck insisting that his poor little life would cease to have any meaning _whatsoever_ if somebody didn't take him to the big tournament at the Goop Zone. "But I _can't_ go all by myself, guys!" he pleaded desperately. "Who'll give me moral support? Who'll encourage me to do my best? Who'll give me valuable coaching tips? And who'll pay my thirty dollar entry fee?"

"Don't look at me," smirked Jenny. "He's your brother, _Mr. Romance_. You take him."

"I can't take him out on my date!" Brad protested. "And I can't leave him home, either … my folks aren't here!"

The two frustrated teenagers folded their arms and looked down at Tuck's worried face, as the little guy clutched onto his Goop rifle as if it were a life preserver keeping him afloat in an insane, unfair world. All of his manipulations and maneuvering had come to naught; it looked like neither Brad nor Jenny was going to budge this time. Which was _so wrong_, because the cute-little-boy routine almost always worked on at least one of them! Maybe if he tried really hard, one more time, one of them would crack and take him down to the Goop Zone. Jenny could forget about saving the world for one afternoon. And Brad could always get another date with a _stupid disgusting_ girl. How often would they get the chance to make a small, loveable child truly happy? He hugged his Goop Rifle as if it were a cuddly teddy bear, and gazed up at Brad and Jenny with quivering anime eyes. "Doesn't anyone care about me at all?" he pouted, with a cracking voice. "All I want is for my awesome big brother …" – _eye contact with Brad, good_ – "… or my super-cool best friend …" – _yes, nice one! Jenny's gonna crack!_ – "… to spend a couple of hours with me." _And now for the grand finale._ Tears welled up in his eyes, and gently trickled down his chubby cheeks. _Nobody can withstand the power of the old water works!_ "I just want _somebody_ to take me down to the Goop Zone. Is _that_ too much to ask?"

Brad and Jenny looked uncomfortable; it had been a very effective guilt trip. They exchanged awkward glances. Then they exchanged a pair of wicked smiles.

* * *

Growing a few extra sets of silver-green arms _did_ make it easier for Drew to carry groceries into the house from his Mom's station wagon. He slung his knapsack over his shoulder with a free arm, slammed the trunk shut, and lugged eight plastic bags towards the front door. He wasn't sure if he was more tired from his little visit to Cluster Prime – _ahem_, which his Mom knew nothing about – or from the day of fast food service hell he'd just finished up, at Wonder Weenie. His Dad had told him that work builds character. _It had better_, thought Drew, because earning minimum wage meant that he couldn't afford to _buy_ any. _Just let me get inside_, he groaned to himself. He morphed one of his fingers into a copy of his front door key, then morphed one of his feet into another hand, and grabbed the doorknob. "Hey, Mom! You want me to take the ice cream down to the deep freeze, or do you want it in the kitchen?"

"Just take it into the kitchen, sweetie," his mother called out in a singsong voice, as she locked the car doors. "I was thinking we could have …"

She stopped in mid-sentence, and after a moment's pause, Drew realized that she was staring blankly at his multi-armed form, with a nervous tic pulling at the corner of her lower left eyelid. She began to chuckle awkwardly. "Heh, heh … oh my, you've … turned yourself into some kind of octopus creature. That's … that's _practical_, I suppose. Heh, heh … heh …"

He sighed to himself, and quickly opened the front door. "_Umm_ … I'll just get myself into the kitchen. And out of sight of the neighbors." He recognized that look on his mother's face. It wasn't that she was ashamed of him … it was just that every now and then, the reality of having a lump of synthetic nano-goo for a son made her … _freak out_, a little. How long had it been since the accident, six months? Longer? And she still wasn't _really_ used to the idea of having an android for a son. He lugged the groceries into the kitchen, keeping his extra silvery arms just long enough to stash everything away in the cupboards, before re-absorbing them into his body as his Mom walked in and sat down at the kitchen table.

"I was thinking I'd make my special meatloaf for dinner tonight," chirped Mrs. Nabholtz, as she smoothed the pleats in her floral print dress. "And then we could have the ice cream for dessert! Won't that be nice? It's mint chocolate chip. Your favorite!"

Drew frowned, and pulled a handful of metal rods out of the last grocery bag. "Uh, Mom? Uh … don't you remember, I told you that my nanobots need to get more copper and titanium in their diet? I haven't eaten any kind of ice cream in almost a year."

She fixed a loose hair in her bobbed hairdo, and the nervous tic started again.

"Which … is _why_," he gulped, pasting a phony grin on his face, "it'll be so great to have a big bowl of it tonight!" What the heck, he could always break the ice cream down into its constituent atoms and pretend that he was eating it, if it made his Mom happy.

"Wonderful!" she swooned, giving his silver-green cheek a motherly pinch. "Now why don't you head upstairs and do your homework, and I'll bake you up some nice, fresh cookies!"

"Sure, Mom," he moaned, too tired to argue the obvious any longer. He did have a couple hours' worth of homework to finish off, but all he planned to do for _now_ was head to his bedroom and get some rest. His diagnostics told him that he still had a bit of self-repair to finish off from his Underground mission. And a day of wearing a giant wiener for a hat was enough to drain the spirit of anyone, be they man or android. He grabbed his knapsack, gave it a quick pat to make sure that his teleporter was still inside, and dragged himself up the stairs. Maybe once everything had quieted down later on, he'd sneak a quick call to Allison and see how the sabotage attack on the Anywhere Cannon turned out. He locked his bedroom door behind him, tossed his knapsack on his wrinkle-free bed, and snuck a holo-disk out of a drawer filled with unused socks – the same holo-disk of him and Ally back at Festival Square, on Cluster Prime. A small smile twitched on his face; he worried about her and her dangerous work, but the prospect of calling her later made him feel better already. With a yawn and a stretch, he stepped into his metal washtub, and collapsed into a blissfully gurgling mass of quicksilver …

When the doorbell rang. Drew ignored it, letting his subsystems drift into regeneration mode as his mother answered the door. It couldn't have been a salesman, because she sounded positively elated to see whoever it was. "Drew! Sweetie! Drew, come downstairs!"

With a groan and a _schwerrrrp_, an amorphous mass of silver-green goo slopped itself back out of the tub, returning to humanoid form by the time he got to the stairs. _Just when I got comfortable … maybe I can just get rid of them._ "Mom, what is it? I'm trying to sleep … er, study! I'm trying to _study_ …"

"You have visitors, dear!" She gestured to the open door with a graceful flourish …

Where Brad was standing with a monster grin on his face, turning the charm up to eleven for the benefit of Mrs. Nabholtz. His hair gleamed with fresh hair gel, the three hairs on his chin were freshly shaved … and his hand was resting on the shoulder of one _very_ disgruntled little black-haired boy, who wore a fully loaded Johnny Zoom backpack.

"Hey, Drewster!" Brad called out. A shiver ran through Drew's nano-circuits. Nothing good was going to come from this.

"Need you to do me a huge favor, good buddy," Brad continued, without allowing anyone else to mutter so much as a syllable. He talked so fast, you'd think that the oxygen wasn't getting a chance to actually enter his lungs. "Not a lot of time here, so here's the skinny. Big date tonight. Parents busy. Jen busy. Everyone busy. Nobody to look after Tuck. Can't leave the squirt alone. Can't take him with me. Can't get a sitter. Whaddaya say?"

Drew's mouth flapped like a landed trout as he processed the info that Brad had just machine-gunned at him. "You … you want _me_ to babysit your little brother?"

Brad gave him a playful punch on the shoulder, and hoisted Tuck into his arms. "I _knew_ you'd volunteer, pal! I owe you one, bud."

"_Volunteer?_" gasped Drew. "Wait a second, I never said …"

But by then, Brad had already disappeared down the walkway, and was diving behind the steering wheel of his father's Turbo Wagon. The engine screamed to life, the tires squealed with wisps of white smoke, and he took off down the street like a bank robber fleeing the scene of a crime.

Drew blinked a few times in stupefied amazement, still unsure of what in _blazes_ had just happened. He looked down at Tuck, who just folded his arms in disgust.

"So are you just going to stand there like a statue, or are you going to bring me inside? _Weenie Boy?_"

* * *

Continued in Chapter Four

* * *


	4. Unscheduled Overtime

A/N – Wow, I never expected Drew's Mom to get so much reaction! She's only a minor character in this story. And in a way, you _do_ have to have a little sympathy for the poor woman. A couple of you asked for fan art to accompany this story. I'm very sorry – there's just not enough time to make that happen. I believe that after my current project at work is done, the boss is going to make us build him a couple of pyramids. Some of you have accurately noted that Tuck doesn't have a very high opinion of Drew right now – all those robot powers, and instead of heroically battling evil, he's just a loser at Wonder Weenie (as far as he knows). And some of you noted that I enjoy writing Tuck as a scheming little troublemaker! Boy, if you thought Tuck was trouble _so_ far … read on.

* * *

The Anywhere Cannon

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Four – Unscheduled Overtime

* * *

Tuck scowled with righteous anger as he watched the rear end of the Turbo Wagon hang a hard left at the stop sign, and disappear out of view. _Lousy stinking Brad!_ He had time to drive his little brother over to Drew's house, and dump him off like a sack of laundry, but he didn't have time to drive him to Goop Zone for the most important afternoon of his life? What kind of messed up priorities were _those_? Hadn't the big doofus ever heard of the sacred bond of fraternal love that exists between brothers? Oh, he was _so_ getting Tabasco sauce injected into his toothpaste tube tonight. The frustrated youngster made a mental note to schedule his revenge, then turned his attention back to his immediate problem. The Bot Buster tournament started in a little under an hour. And he was stuck here in the Tremorton suburbs, with no transportation. Well, he wasn't ready to throw the towel in just _yet_. He just had to think of _something_.

He looked up into Drew's perplexed face, who still looked like he'd just been handed a ticking bomb. "Uh … hello, Drew?" he said, his voice laced with sarcasm. Most of the bitterness was intended for Brad; Drew just happened to be the closest convenient recipient. "My feet actually _do_ work."

"Oh … uh, yeah, sorry about that, little guy," the android stammered nervously, as he set Tuck down. "Uh … _sooooo_, what are you, y'know, doing? Here? In my house?"

"Andrew! _Manners!_" snapped Mrs. Nabholtz, as she cheerfully brushed a stray fleck of lint from Tuck's shoulder. Tuck wasn't sure what to make of Drew's mother at first; with her bobbed hairdo and bright floral dress, she looked like she'd just stepped out of a time capsule from the 1950's. "I thought it was _very sweet_ to get a visit from that nice Bradley Carbunkle boy," she told her son. "It's so nice to see you making friends that don't … _rattle_. And he thought enough of you to bring his little brother over to spend some time with you! Don't you think that was awfully sweet of him?"

The teenaged android struggled to talk through gritting teeth. "Heh, heh. Oh yeah, Brad's a _reeeeeal_ sweetheart, all right."

Mrs. Nabholtz didn't seem to pick up on her son's sarcasm; instead, to Tuck's growing discomfort, she knelt down and focused her attention on him, gazing into his eyes with her hands clasped lovingly beneath her chin. Kind of looking at him with the same sort of half-crazy look that nutty Aunt Gladys always gave him during family holiday dinners. "_So_, you must be Tucker," she beamed giddily, unable to resist the urge to pinch his chubby little cheeks.

For a second, he thought she was going to squeeze them right off his face. "_Ow!_ Stop it, lady! You're breaking blood vessels!"

"Such a _clever_ boy!" laughed Mrs. Nabholtz, as she playfully tussled his mop of black hair. "Such a big, strong, human boy – _handsome_! I said handsome!" She chuckled awkwardly, and a nervous tic tugged at her eyelid. "Oh, it's such a pleasure to _meet you_!"

Tuck winced slightly under the glare of Mrs. Nabholtz's maternal grin. As a typical, All-American Cute Little Boy, he'd gone through more than his fair share of affectionate maulings like this from visiting relatives, his mother's friends from work, and the fat lady from church who smelled like deodorant. But this was starting to make the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. "Uh … okay, Drew – your Mom's kinda _weirding_ me out here."

But instead of taking offense, Drew's mother laughed again. "Isn't he just _darling_!" she gushed, giving Tuck a hug worthy of a visiting grandma. She turned to Drew, as she straightened out a cowlick just above Tuck's left ear. "You know, Andrew, I can remember back when _you_ were this size. Oh, you used to have such fun, playing out on the lawn all day, with your little dolls … maybe you could find them upstairs for Tucker to play with?"

A snort erupted from Tuck's nose. "_Dolls?_ BWA HA HA HAAA …"

Drew nearly coughed his teeth across the room. "_Geeez!_ Mom, I was _seven_! And they were G.I. Joes! They weren't dolls, they were action figures! _Action figures!_ And I'm not going to dig through the attic looking for junk just because Tuck's here!"

"Oh, stop being like that, Andrew," she smiled, as she tickled Tuck on the chin, eliciting more guffaws of laughter from him. "He's our special little guest for today! And as good hosts, we should do whatever it takes to make him happy. Now, is there anything we can do for you, Tucker? Anything at _all_?"

Tuck wiped a tear from his eye … and a scheming smile blossomed across his cute little face.

"_Anything?_"

_This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel_, Tuck grinned to himself. He rubbed his conniving little hands together, and conjured up his very best pair of puppy dog eyes. Brad and Jenny might have been wise to his tricks, but Drew's Mom was a fresh target who was desperate to make a little boy happy. And he knew _just_ how she could do that. "Golly gee, Mrs. Nabholtz," he chirped, "didn't my big bot buddy Drew tell you?" He bolted two steps, and flung his arms around Drew's silver-green leg, crushing it in a love-soaked hug. "He promised me that we could go to the Goop Zone together this afternoon! Gosh, we're gonna have so much fun playing games and eating pizza and winning prizes – golly gosh gee whiz, I've been waiting all week long!"

"Whoa … WHAT?" shouted a befuddled Drew, shaking his leg in vain – the little con artist was clamped on tighter than an Alabama tick.

"Gee, don't you remember, Drew?" Tuck was enjoying this a little too much; Drew looked like he'd just been handed an army draft notice. The shell-shocked teenager really didn't stand a chance as long as his mother was in the room. Brooding teenager versus cute little boy; it was almost unfair, really. Yeah, like Tuck cared. "You promised we could go, bot buddy!"

"Oh, that's very sweet of you, dear!" Drew's mother gave him a quick hug, and a peck on the cheek. "I'm so glad that you're finally starting to take an interest in helping others."

"Wait … no, I … I never promised the little squirt anything!"

"You're my bestest bestest best bot buddy in the whole wide world," gurgled Tuck, as he mashed his cheek against Drew's knee. This _was_ a bit over the top – but, pride was seriously overrated. Especially when a ride to the Goop Zone tournament was hanging in the balance.

"Well, I'll tell you what, Tucker dear," cooed Mrs. Nabholtz, as she gave Tuck's cheek another playful pinch. "Why don't we get you some nice hot cookies, and a big glass of cold milk, and then we can all drive down to your little Goop Zone playground for an afternoon of fun! How does that sound?"

Drew's arms flailed like he was speaking in semaphore. "But I never _said_ that …"

"Wow, that sounds _super duper_ cool!" cheered Tuck, matching Mrs. Nabholtz's saccharin grin tooth for tooth. It was everything he could do to keep from breaking character as she retreated into the kitchen with a _click-click-click_ of her sensible heels. Once she was out of sight, he finally dropped the cute act, and celebrated his master stroke by pumping his fists and spinning in giddy circles as if he'd just caught the touchdown pass that won the Super Bowl. "_Yesss!_ They haven't made the adult yet that can withstand the ol' puppy dog eyes!" He started churning his arms, performing a cabbage patch victory dance. "We're go-in' Goooop Zone, we're go-in' Goooop Zone, we're go-in' …"

The celebration was harshly interrupted, as silver-green arms hoisted him up onto a chair. Drew's face looked like it was deciding whether to explode or not. "What the _heck_ was that all about?"

"I suppose an explanation is in order," smiled Tuck, with the calm manner of a professor who was about to give a science lecture. He reached into his backpack, and pulled out his trusty MegaSoaker 400 Goop rifle, running his hand along the barrel as if he were presenting it as the grand prize on a game show. "You see, there's a big tournament in the new Bot Buster room at the Goop Zone that I _really_ need to go to. Jenny wouldn't take me, and Brad wouldn't take me, but _you_ just generously offered to make sure I get there in time for the opening buzzer. Nothing personal, Drew – it was strictly business. I _was_ kind of hoping for some robot fighting tips, too – but I doubt there's much of _that_ kind of thing going on down at the Wonder Weenie. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers. By the way, I need thirty bucks for the entry fee."

"Thirty bu-! _Snxx Glmphrr Frbble_ …" – apoplectic spasms racked Drew's body, and he shook a fist underneath Tuck's sweetly smiling face. "Listen up, you little snotpicker, if you seriously think for a moment that I'm gonna take you to …"

"Drew, Drew, Drew." Tuck shook his head with a patronizing chuckle. "As an only child, I see you're unfamiliar with how the whole 'little brother' thing works. Allow me to demonstrate."

And as if a switch was tossed on an air raid siren, Tuck's lungs belted out a howl of woe that saturated the house with an ear-splitting sound. "_BAAAWWWW!_ No, Drew, STOP! You're scaring me! YOU'RE SCARING ME …"

Horrified, Drew realized what the little trickster was doing and tried to quiet him down, but it was already too late. His mother rushed out of the kitchen carrying a tray of cookies, and the motherly fires of hell and damnation were burning in her eyes. "Andrew Skyler Nabholtz, you should be _ashamed_ of yourself! Scaring a poor little innocent boy like that! What were you _thinking_?"

"Yeah, what were you thinking …" – Tuck was almost in pain, holding back the laughter – "… _Skyler_?"

"But … but … _Gshnxxx_ …" – Drew smacked himself in the forehead. He'd been knocked back on his heels from the moment Tuck had shown up at his door, and things had only spiraled _more_ out of control for him with every passing minute. He was an android thrown overboard, struggling for a life preserver, only to have the stormy waves of cosmic unfairness sweep him further and further out to sea. "Mom, I didn't – he's not – it's not what it looks like …"

Then curiously, Drew stopped in mid-sentence – and seemed to freeze in place for a second, as if something else had caught his attention. More curious still, he slapped his hand over his eyes. Tuck could make out some sort of strobe effect coming through the silver-green fingers, almost as if … almost as if Drew's eyes were _flashing_. That seemed kind of weird, thought Tuck, before tossing it aside with a shrug of his shoulders. _Eh, robots … whaddaya gonna do_.

If possible, Drew looked even more freaked out than he did ten seconds ago. "Ah … you know what, Mom? I'm gonna go upstairs after all, and … uh … _ummmm_ … look for those old G.I. Joes, just like you said!" And without waiting for an acknowledgement from either his mother or Tuck, he bolted away and raced upstairs like his rear end was on fire.

"Don't be too long, sweetie," Mrs. Nabholtz shouted up after him – before shrugging her own shoulders in exasperation. "That boy – I just don't know what I'm going to do with him sometimes. Well, then." Teeth gleaming with a fresh smile, she presented her serving tray of home-baked goodies to her precious little visitor. "I'm _so_ sorry that Andrew was so mean to you, Tucker," she said, as she handed him a cold glass of milk. "Do you think maybe a cookie would help you feel better?"

Tuck eagerly grabbed a warm, moist chocolate chip cookie – he'd smelled them since they'd come out of the oven, and they smelled _amazing_. "Well … _maybe_," he grinned, as he mushed the first bite of sweet chocolaty goodness into his cheeks. His eyes rolled back with bliss – and hey, now that he had a ride lined up for the Goop Zone, he had to get his strength up for the competition, didn't he? He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and pounded back a second cookie. Then a third and a fourth. "_Mmmmm._ You know, Mrs. Nabholtz, I'm going to start coming over here more often!"

* * *

Drew poked his head out the bedroom window, checking to make sure there were no curious neighbors lounging about in their back yards. The "Incoming Call" message blinked incessantly across his computerized vision, in obnoxious red letters that were impossible to ignore. _Sheesh_, he'd just gotten home from work, had a pint-sized holy terror dumped in his lap, and now the rest of his afternoon had just been _totally_ shot to heck … apparently, sixty seconds of peace and quiet was too much to hope for. Well, he sighed, Allison wouldn't have used the special 'Urgent' code unless it was important; better see what the big emergency was all about. A set of spidery silver-green tentacles sprung from his body; he pulled himself out the window, climbed up the wall, and clumsily spilled himself onto the roof. Reception was a lot better up there – plus, it had the nice side benefit of guaranteeing that one of his parents wouldn't accidentally walk in on his call. He straddled the crest of the roof for stability, still fuming over Tuck's scam job, and tried to calm down. Unsuccessfully.

"… rotten little punk, can't _believe_ Mom fell for that … _nrrrrghhh!"_ He stretched out his arms as if performing some bizarre set of android calisthenics, and scanned the sky with synthetically enhanced vision, picking out radio sources that glowed invisibly in the heavens above. He oriented himself using quasars and satellites as reference points, reading the sprawling cosmos like a road map. Then he picked out a vector in the sky, and his pliable body shape-shifted into a surreal, shiny hyperwave dish. A starburst of antennas curled out from his ribs, and reached upwards like the stamen of an alien flower. This was a _really_ long distance call.

A video screen sprouted from a stalk on his chest. It lit up with thousands of rapidly scrolling computer symbols, representing one-half of an incredibly long code key sequence that Drew matched up to a _second_ half he had stored away in his nano-circuitry. All teenagers valued their privacy on the phone, but when your girlfriend was a wanted criminal, and living in a police state, well, you needed a little _extra_ privacy. With the code confirmed, the video feed decrypted itself – to reveal LSN-1482, aka Allison, the robot girl who had gone from being just another public servant to leading the infamous Free Cluster Underground. If you didn't know her, you would never have thought her capable of standing up to an evil queen who ruled half the galaxy. If you didn't _know_ her.

Allison was sitting in a high-backed chair, surrounded by multi-colored computer screens, in front of a backdrop of blinking lights and large, star-filled windows. "Communications channel secured," she said, in a crisp, stern, almost military tone. "A rolling gear gathers no rust."

"Oh, right, umm …" – what was the right counter-phrase today – "… a robot in the hand is worth two on the assembly line. Do we _still_ have to use these stupid code phrases?"

Allison feigned insult at his complaint. "Hey, you used to think they were _cool_," she smirked. "By the way, what took you so long to pick up?"

"I used to think _G.I. Joes_ were cool," he huffed, in a haggard voice. "And I'm sorry about that, it's just that you kind of caught me in the middle of … something. I'll explain later, if I haven't completely _lost my mind_ by then. For now, let's just say that _you_ … you are a sight for sore sensors, pretty lady." Maybe a call from Allison _was_ just the thing to lift his mood, even if it was in the context of a secret communiqué from five thousand light-years away. He wiggled his eyebrows at her, struck by a sudden bout of silliness. "I see a few stars in that window over your shoulder. Of course, I _always_ see stars whenever I look into your eyes, Sugar Droid …"

A flash of horrified violet came to her cheeks … and a few snickers erupted in the background, further souring her mood. She shot a nasty look to somebody off-screen, and tried to regain her professional composure. "Ackk! _Dreeew_," she coughed, "_ix-nay_ on the _uger-Shay oid-Dray_ …"

His face sunk; so much for romance, once again. "Oh, fer the love of … you're _not alone_, are you? _Ehhh_, that's just great. I was hoping we … uh … could … wait a second – those stars in the window." He did a quick double-check with his video processors to verify his observation. "They're moving! That means … _geez_, Ally, you're in space! You actually left the bunker? Where the heck are you?"

"I'm on board Captain Polaris' star cruiser, the CSS _Free Will_." The ship's old name had just been a semi-random jumble of numbers assigned by a Cluster military computer; _not_ exactly the kind of name that inspired the poets. "A couple of other Underground leaders are here, too. For the big mission."

It _would_ take something pretty big to get her off the planet – he snapped his fingers, as the likely answer occurred to him. "Oh, right, the raid on the Anywhere Cannon! I almost forgot about that. So. How'd it go? Did it blow up real good?"

She awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck, with an uneasy look on her face. "Heh-heh. _Ummm …_ yeah. About that …"

If Drew had still owned a stomach, it would have sunk into his ankles just about then. He'd seen that look on her face before; somehow, it was never followed by good news. "Because you _are_ calling to tell me that the mission's over, right? And the base is destroyed, and it was a total success, right? And you're all heading back home to celebrate with cookies and anti-freeze, right? _Right?_"

"Drew, listen – we don't exactly have a lot of time here," she answered, with a touch of impatience. She blew an irritating strip of hair-foil out of her eyes, and sighed. "There's a problem with the raid. We've run into a little bit of a … _ehh_ … snag."

His eyelids narrowed into a suspicious glare. "What kind of … _snag_?"

"Okay, remember the file that you stole from Base One Zero this morning?" She began to speak quicker and quicker, a hint of stress creeping into her voice; one might wonder if the robot girl had replaced the oil in her veins with espresso. "Okay, we got it decoded, and it had a full set of blueprints and schematics for the Anywhere Cannon's secret base. Get this: they built the base on the _inside_ of a hollowed-out asteroid. Man, does that just scream _evil lair_, or what? So the most dangerous weapon in the whole galaxy just looks like a big chunk of rock drifting through space. It's in an asteroid belt, circling an uncharted double star, that's hidden inside of the Gearshift Nebula."

"Wow, talk about 'off the beaten path'," said Drew. A fleet of a hundred warships could search forever for something like that, and never find it.

"No kidding," frowned Allison. Her face shrunk into a small window on the screen, making room for a frenzied splatter of computer-generated blueprints and star charts. "So anyway, The _Free Will_ hyperspace-jumped to the double-star system, and we zipped behind one of the gas giants to hide, because, I figured, _y'know_, run a quick scan on the base first, better safe than sorry, right? Well, it turned out to be a good thing we did."

A new diagram on the screen showed a detailed cross-section of the Cluster asteroid-base. "Polaris' plan was simple enough. The CSS _Free Will_ is carrying a stealth cruise missile that we stole from one of Vexus' armories a few weeks ago. It's cutting edge, state of the art, but we only have one of them. But no biggie, right? We shoot the missile at the asteroid, asteroid go _boom_, we fly away, and voila, another crushing defeat for the forces of evil."

"Yeah, yeah, and there was much rejoicing," he groaned. "And that's not happening, _because_ …?"

Allison snarled and drummed her fingers, shooting another evil glance off-screen. "I'm not going to name names … let's just say that somebody, who might be a Captain, and whose name rhymes with _Shmolaris_, somehow missed the fact that the asteroid has an …" – she paused, and read a line from her arm-computer – "… n-dimensional spacetime-manifold hyperflux generator installed on it." She registered the look of bewilderment on Drew's face, and rolled her eyes in sympathetic frustration. "Hey … don't ask me, I can barely _spell_ it. Greaser tells me it's like a jumbo force field. And it's powerful enough to protect the whole asteroid from our cruise missile."

"Get a bigger missile?" Drew suggested, hopefully.

"_Hmph_. Typical _male_ answer," she half-smirked at him, shaking her head. "Not enough time. We think that the base is about to go fully operational. We have to attack _now_, before Commander Smytus has a chance to fire the cannon at some poor defenseless planet! So we put our heads together, and figured … the only way to destroy the asteroid base is to …" – she put on a big smile, and fidgeted with her fingers – "… make sure that the force field is shut down _first_. Say, by, _ohhhh_, I don't know … just tossing out an idea here … having somebody sneak in and _sabotage_ it …"

"Oh boy, I don't like where _this_ is going," he gulped, glumly.

"Drew, we need you to jump to that asteroid and disable the force field. I'm sending coordinates for your teleporter now – for both the secret base, and the current position of the _Free Will_." A block of gibberish popped up on the flat screen, with arrows pointing to selected spots in the double-star system. "I know this is _really_ short notice, but time is crucial. As soon as we see that the force field is down, Polaris will launch the stealth cruise missile. Then you'll teleport off the asteroid, and join us here on the _Free Will_ before the missile hits." Allison nervously rubbed her right arm-housing, unable to contain her concern any longer. "Th-that cruise missile has a pretty big warhead, Drew. Once the force field is down …. don't waste any time getting off that asteroid, okay?"

"_Jeez_, you're making this sound better all the time," groaned Drew, with a melodramatic roll of his eyes. He more or less figured that she'd suggest something like this; under the circumstances, it wasn't a bad plan. And it _was_ the kind of thing he did at least twice a week now, in his little part-time job with the Cluster Underground. But still – _yeesh_, this one was going to be a doozy.

Allison's shoulders sank; her face, a silent apology. Her hydraulics wrapped themselves into a cold, hard knot deep down in her chassis; she knew how dangerous this mission was going to be. "Drew, if there was any other way …"

Drew sighed, and gave the video screen a wan smile. Smytus had a doomsday weapon that could wipe out the planet Earth and conquer the galaxy, and for some perverse, cosmic joke of a reason, the only hope of defeating him rested with a scrawny, anxious pile of silver-green pudding. "Sure, why not. It can't be as bad as selling chili dogs to a bunch of screaming mall brats, right?" He broke into a laugh, even managing to coax a giggle out of his distressed girlfriend. Then his voice grew more serious, and he looked Allison square in the eyes. "Ally, I told you months ago, when you decided to start the Underground, that I would _be_ there for you, whenever you needed me, no matter what. And I _meant_ it. I meant it for the easy stuff, and I meant it for the tough stuff, too. You _know_ that all you ever have to do … is ask." A tense silence came over the two young robots as they contemplated the dangers of the approaching mission. They smiled warmly at each other, their eyes speaking volumes more than mere words ever could. Drew morphed one of his antennae back into an arm, and raised his hand to the video screen, as if to caress it. Allison did likewise on her end of the link, reaching out as if to lovingly touch him across the gulf of space that separated the –

"_Bleeeeah_," blurted out a mischievous, chuckling voice. "Man, this is worse than those Spanish soap operas that Jenny watches! _Mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa_ … I think I'm gonna puke."

Drew jumped five feet in the air, like a silver-green cat whose tail had just been stepped on. It was only a miracle of android reflexes that kept him from lurching off the roof in total shock. Spindly legs scrambled for purchase on the roof shingles, and his head twisted around to come face to face with …

"_Tuck!_" he gasped, nearly flummoxed beyond the ability to form words. Where in blazes did _he_ come from? The black-haired scamp was standing calmly behind him, watching the whole show with a Cheshire-cat grin painted across his face. Drew grabbed two fistfuls of green-flecked hair and tried to put a coherent sentence together. A thousand panicky questions screamed in his nano-circuits, but all he could manage to grunt through his teeth was "What … why … how … when …"

"Not exactly Mister Articulate, are you?" frowned Tuck. "Hard to believe you're the same guy who wrote the mooshy love poem I found in your bedroom." He glanced over one of Drew's antenna-arms, and waved at the stunned robot girl he saw on the screen. "Hi! I'm Tuck! You must be _Sugar Droid_."

Drew barely had time to register the baffled look on Allison's face, before hastily sucking his array of screens and antennas back into his body, like a syrupy umbrella self-consciously snapping itself closed. "_Gshnnxxx _… Tuck …" – he balled his shaking fists and counted to ten to keep his temper in check. Then he counted to a million. Nano-computers can count _very_ fast. "Tuck, what the blazes are you _doing_ up here? How long were you standing there? How much did you hear? What did … wait a minute. You were in my _bedroom_!"

"It was the quickest way to get up to the roof," he said with a shrug of his shoulders, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Don't worry – I've been crawling in and out of Jenny's bedroom window for _months_." He paced back and forth as effortlessly as if he were walking down the front walkway. "I'm practically part mountain goat. You never know what you're going to find on a roof until you actually get up there. It's like searching for lost pirate treasure! Why, just this month I've found four Frisbees, a box kite, and half a dozen practice golf balls!"

Drew didn't even _try_ to make sense of that. "_Jzzzshnxx_ … Tuck, were you just _spying_ on me?"

"Relax, relax," smiled Tuck, as he trotted towards the edge of the roof. "I wasn't _spying_ on you. I just came up to remind you that we're all driving to the Goop Zone in a few minutes."

_D'oh!_ Drew smacked himself in the forehead – he'd almost forgotten. Oh, man, he needed to think of a way to weasel out of this, and _fast_; he had bigger things to worry about right now than some stupid Goop Gun tournament. "Oh boy … Goop Zone. Right. _Ummm_ … listen, Tuck, about that. I've got to … take care of something _really_ important, first. _Sooooo_, why don't you and my Mom head on over to the Goop Zone, and you get yourself all signed up for your little tournament, and … er … I'll meet you there in a little while, after I'm done with my … _ehh_ … thing." He crossed his fingers; maybe the little fellow was open to reasonable negotiation. "Would you be cool with that?"

Tuck rubbed his chin in deep thought, as if he were weighing the negotiating points of a World Peace Treaty. "I _suppose_ that would be okay," he said, leading Drew to relax in a moment of hope. Then Tuck grabbed a string of white knotted sheets that were looped around the rain gutter, and repelled down to Drew's bedroom window. "Oh, and don't worry, if your Mom asks where you are, I'll just tell her that you'll be along … as soon as you're done with your secret mooshy phone calls to your robot girlfriend!"

Drew shrieked in horror, clambered across the roof, and swung himself back inside his bedroom with the grace of a man falling down a flight of stairs. "Wait! Wait! No, Tuck, just … don't tell my mother!" Drew's parents weren't exactly wild about Allison because (a) she was a robot, (b) she lived five thousand light-years away, (c) on a planet that attacked Earth more or less on a weekly basis, (d) and she managed to get him into trouble all the time. His folks _didn't realize_ that he was still talking to Allison regularly, let alone still seeing her. And Drew wasn't eager to have them find out. Because if they did find out that he was sneaking off on life-threatening sabotage missions to help Allison's band of Cluster guerillas – he'd be grounded until _retirement_. "Tuck, please, just hold up for a second …"

Tuck laughed as he tightened the straps on his Johnny Zoom backpack. Drew truly was a total _newb_ when it came to handling little brothers. Tuck hadn't even _known_ that Drew was hiding anything; all he'd done was play a bluff. Ah, the favorite taunt of little brothers the world over … _I'm gonna tell Mom!_ He jumped up on Drew's mattress, and leaned back on one of the pillows. "Perhaps you'd care to reconsider your totally lame attempt to _bail_ on me?"

"I wasn't trying to bail …" stammered Drew – it was only _then_ that he noticed the white sheets which Tuck had tied into a makeshift rope. "What did you do to my bed sheets, you little monster? Great, Mom's gonna kill me." He didn't have time for this …

"Well it's not like you were using them, Pudding Boy," smirked Tuck. "You sleep in a tub!"

_I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this ..._ "Tuck, please. Will you just get out of my room, and go downstairs? My Mom will _take_ you to your stupid Goop Zone deal. I'll meet you there later, I _promise_." Anything to get Tuck out of this bedroom right now. _Now, where did I put that thing …_ Drew frowned, and started rifling through the mess of books on his plywood bookshelves. For some reason, everything in his room seemed more disorganized than he'd remembered leaving it. "Tuck, did you go through all my stuff?"

"Of course I did," he said, matter-of-factly. "How do you think I found that stupid poem?"

"_Gnshhnnxxx …_" – count to a million – "… so do you just rummage through you brother's room like this, too?" He fumed, and yanked out the sock drawer, tossing perfectly folded, unused tube socks onto the floor. _Where is that stupid …_

"_Naw_, don't have to. I know where all his good stuff _is_." Tuck sat up on the mattress, folded his arms, and delivered a look of disapproval at Drew. "I came up here because I figured, hey, this is the room of a freaky cool teenage robot, so there must be some freaky cool stuff in here! Maybe some trouble monitors, or secret weapons … or some kind of way cool technology that I could sneak into the Goop Zone with me. Haven't you ever seen Jenny's bedroom? There's all kinds of fantastical scientific blinky gizmos all over the place! But _sheesh_, here you are, Mister Freaky High-tech Nanodroid, and your room is just as boring as _Brad's_."

"Sorry to disappoint you," Drew grumbled sarcastically. If he wasn't so distracted, he'd have tossed the little pest out by now. His neck _shwerped_ out, stretching to look behind his study desk. _Didn't I hide it back here?_

"You don't even have any decent video games," whined Tuck, as he reached underneath one of the pillows. "All I could find was this busted-up GameStation Portable in your knapsack."

_The knapsack!_ Drew snapped his fingers with a grin. _That's where I left it! It was in my knapsack, that I tossed on the bed_ – a horrible, sickening feeling blossomed in Drew's innards, like yogurt going bad – _the same bed that Tuck just totally ransacked._

"Wait a minute," Drew said as he turned around. "I don't own a GameStation Portable …"

The spoiled-yogurt feeling in Drew's syrupy gut spread through his entire body. There, in Tuck's pilfering little hands, was a brick-sized chunk of exotic alien technology, held together with mismatched parts and a double roll of utility tape – and Tuck was busily mashing the buttons on its interface, no doubt wondering why he couldn't get the start screen of Super Hammer Brothers to boot up. The gizmo that Tuck thought was a busted-up video game was, in fact, Drew's hyperspace teleporter, the same portal generator he used to travel back and forth to Cluster Prime – and the one he needed to use _right now_ if he was going to have any chance of helping out Allison and the Underground.

"Hey!" Tuck beamed triumphantly. "I think I figured out how this thing works."

"_Tuck!_" shouted Drew. "For Pete's sake, whatever you do, don't …"

The teleporter clicked and beeped … and a chittering hiss filled the confines of Drew's bedroom, like the scream of a hundred thousand locusts. A ferocious blast of wind kicked up a spontaneous tornado of homework assignments and baseball magazines. Tuck's eyes sprang to the size of hubcaps, staring in disbelief as a crazy, kaleidoscope-colored hole ripped open directly underneath him, as if the mattress had suddenly decided to eat him alive. With a shriek of surprise, and clutching onto the teleporter for dear life, the youngest Carbunkle dropped into the gaping portal and disappeared from sight. Then just as suddenly as it had opened, the wormhole began to seal itself up. Drew leapt desperately towards the mouth of the vortex … but it blinked into nothingness just as he arrived. Instead of following Tuck through dimensions, the panicking android just got a face full of pillow.

"_Oh … crap_," he squeaked, as a flurry of loose leaf paper drifted down around him.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Five

* * *


	5. O Little Brother, Where Art Thou?

A/N – Alrighty, we've officially got things rolling now! Why does everyone assume that they know where Tuck is going to wind up? After all, Drew didn't get a chance to enter the secret coordinates into his teleporter, did he? Well, I guess we'll just have to see where the little troublemaker lands. And we'll have to see how poor ol' Drew handles _this_ little wrinkle in his afternoon plans. Now, to sit back with my gallon of Insta-Flavor ice cream and let my diabolical little mind dream something up nasty …

* * *

The Anywhere Cannon

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Five – O Little Brother, Where Art Thou?

* * *

The wild-eyed teen android bowled out of his bedroom like a rodeo bull barreling out of its chute, and scrambled downstairs, barely touching the steps with his elongated legs. _Oh crap. Oh crap. Ohcrap-ohcrap-ohcrap._ If only that stupid little runt had just minded his own business, but _oh, no!_ Tuck had to go poking around in his bedroom, and find his hyperspace teleporter. For criminy's sake, his parents hadn't found that thing for the past two months – and Tuck finds it in five minutes! He mumbled a silent prayer, hoping that Tuck would turn up safe and sound somewhere. So he could _wring his little neck_. Even with a complex network of nano-processors for a brain, Drew couldn't count up all the ways he was in trouble right now. What was he going to tell Brad? What was he going to tell his Mom? What was he going to tell _Tuck's_ Mom? And, _oh yeah _– what was he going to tell everyone after Smytus blew up half the galaxy with the Anywhere Cannon? _Gulp._ Okay, this wasn't the time to panic …

"Andrew? Sweetie?" Drew tensed up like he'd been hit with a million-volt power surge. It was his mother, carrying a tray of fresh cookies and milk, smiling like a television commercial brought to life. "Andrew, where's our special little guest? I thought he might like another snack, before we head over to that Glooping Zone place you two are so excited about. Didn't he go upstairs to get you?"

"Uh … _yes!_ Yes, he did!" Drew edged closer to the front door, his mind racing for a plausible lie. "And … that's … why … I'm … taking the little fellow over there right now! Yeah, it's such a lovely day, I figured we'd walk. A little exercise does a body good, right? _Heh-heh_ … _heh_ …"

"Oh." His mother laid a thoughtful finger to her temple. "Odd, I didn't hear Tucker go outside."

"Well, he did! In fact, he's … _uh_ … waiting outside for me, right now!" With a near-silent _schwerrrrp_, Drew stretched an arm underneath the front door – and around the corner of the house, where he morphed his hand into a small speaker membrane. A quick search of his memory archives brought up a copy of Tuck's voice print …

"Hi, Mrs. Nabholtz!" shouted the hand-speaker, faking Tuck's voice perfectly. "I decided I don't want to ride in the car. I forgot, I have … uh … Chronic Carsickness Syndrome! Yeah, that's it! Cars – can't stand 'em. _Sooooo_, we're gonna leave now and not come back, thanks for the cookies, don't bother to look out the window, bye bye!"

A hint of suspicion might have passed over his mother's face – but she smiled it off. "Well, it is a lovely day for a walk, I suppose. You two boys have fun, okay? And Andrew, _do_ make sure and keep an eye on your little friend. You wouldn't want him wandering off somewhere by himself!"

"Oh, _heh-heh_, yeah … wouldn't want _that_," he groaned, rolling his eyes. He sprinted out of the house, put a running timer up in his computer-vision as a reminder of his Underground mission, and tried to conjure up something in his cyber-mind that resembled rational thought. Okay, when Tuck vanished into the vortex, he had _not_ yet programmed the teleporter with an actual destination. And it was _extremely_ unlikely that Tuck had accidentally entered a valid set of coordinates, with his random button pushing. Well, _sort_ of unlikely. Drew tried to settle his churning nanobot innards. Tuck could be anywhere, and there was no way to track someone through hyperspace …

_But_, the teleporter was set by default for short-range hops … and it _might_ be possible to scan for the large surge of energy that was given off when a vortex opened up. It was a long shot, but it was the best idea he could come up with. Drew morphed a large scanning dish out of the top of his head, picked a direction at random, and ran down the sidewalk on all fours, like a silver-green cheetah.

"Tuuuuuuck!" he yelled. _Geez, where did that little squirt get himself to?_

* * *

The Tremorton Convention Center was filled to overflowing with pasty-faced high school kids in home-made costumes and overweight single men wearing foam rubber masks. Brightly colored banners hung from the ceiling, marking the territory of the Confederation of Planets, the Klingoid Empire, the Romulese, the Blorg, and a dozen other alien races that existed only on weekly television. Hundreds of convention booths hawked everything from mint-condition comic books and action figures to the _actual_ toupee worn by Captain Smirk in Episode Forty-One. Yes, the Annual Tri-County Star Dreck Convention was in full swing, and no self-respecting nerd would dream of being anywhere else on this glorious day. Why, Sheldon had marked it down on his calendar six months ago.

He wiped his clammy hands against his blue science tunic to dry off the anxious sweat, then checked to make sure that his pointy rubber ears were still glued on. Mister Spork was his favorite Star Dreck character, and he'd been patiently waiting in line for an hour to get his autograph. He patted his tote bag, where he kept his ultra-rare Mister Spork collector's plate wrapped in protective plastic. Getting that plate autographed would be a young geek's dream come true …

Suddenly the air above him _hisssssed_ like a swarm of insects. Startled, Sheldon looked up just in time to see a pinprick of light grow out of nothingness – to form a howling hole, filled with a crazy kaleidoscope of colors. And he saw something that looked like a tumbling, screaming little boy …

"AAAAAAAAAIIIIIGHHHHHHH!" shrieked Tuck, as he plummeted out of the hole and landed on top of Sheldon like a sack of wet cement. The two boys collapsed to the floor in a tangled, groaning heap. Tuck was so freaked out from his bizarre trip that he was literally _vibrating_. Seeing himself surrounded by weird-looking people with bumpy foreheads and goofy uniforms did _not_ help matters any. He hauled his MegaSoaker 400 out of his backpack, took aim at the first person he saw … and pelted Sheldon right in the kisser with a disgusting blast of sticky, green slime.

"S-s-stay back, alien scum! Don't get any crazy ideas …" – then Tuck took a second look, and cautiously lowered his plastic rifle. "_Sheldon?_"

"_Ptui! Ptui!_" Sheldon wiped as much green goop from his face as he could, and scowled down at his pint-sized assailant. "Tuck! What's the big idea? And what are you _doing_ here?"

Another conventioneer, dressed in full Klingoid battle armor, gave Sheldon a condescending sneer. "It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain," he said in a lisping voice, "that he was re-enacting the energy-creature wormhole attack from Episode Twenty-Six, _Terror From Dimension X_. Although," he huffed, pushing his glasses back up his nose, "he _totally_ got the special effects wrong on the wormhole. And that cheap prop in his hands doesn't look anything like …"

"Hold a just a second," interrupted Tuck, making a _time-out_ signal with his hands. "_Wormhole?_ What are you nerds talking about?"

"You tell _me_!" said Sheldon, as he helped Tuck to his feet. "_You're_ the one who just fell out of a tear in the space-time continuum! Where'd you get a gizmo like that, anyway? Is Dr. Wakeman having a yard sale?"

Instead of answering, Tuck held the brick-sized contraption up to his eyes and gazed at it, as if he'd just pulled Excalibur free from the stone – and an evil grin spread from ear to ear. Realization sunk into his little brain – _I just traveled through a real life wormhole!_ That meant that the gizmo in his hands had to be … a _teleporter_! His imagination raced with fantastic possibilities. What was _Drew_ doing with a teleporter gizmo in his school knapsack? Something totally _weak_, no doubt – maybe he used it to get to his stupid job at Wonder Weenie. Well, he certainly wouldn't miss it if Tuck … _borrowed_ it for a little while. Say, until after the Bot Buster tournament was over. Just think – he would literally be able to zap himself from place to place in the blink of an eye! If someone aimed a Goop gun at him, he'd be able to disappear – and then re-appear behind his attacker! "This – is – the – most – _awesome_ thing ever!" he shouted, holding the teleporter high above his head, in a melodramatic pose. "Now no-one will be able to match my mad Bot Busting skills! I shall be undisputed champion of all Goop Zone! Nay, I shall be master … of space and time itself!"

"Actually," said Sheldon, "those things only travel through space."

"Eh, works for me," smiled Tuck. He rubbed his chin in devious thought. "I've got plenty of time before the tournament starts … maybe I should see what this little baby can do. _Heh, heh, heh_." Tuck stuffed his Goop rifle back in his backpack, and noticed a couple of other objects lying on the floor. "Oh, here you go, Sheldon. I think this fell out of your tote bag."

Sheldon shrieked like a distraught schoolgirl. "My Mister Spork collector's plate! Gahhh, if there's so much as a chink in its finish, its book value drops by fifty percent!" He frantically unfolded the cloth cover, unwrapped the bubble wrap – and sighed with relief. Not a scratch on it.

"Oh, and this is yours, too!" added Tuck, handing over a glossy-covered magazine titled … _Space Wars Fan Universe Monthly_.

"Space Wars?" snorted the Klingoid with the glasses. "Star Dreck is way better than Space Wars! It's the best show in the history of television!"

A teenager wearing an aluminum-foil spacesuit interrupted. "Actually, _both_ are inferior to classic British literary science fiction like _Doctor Whozit_," he sneered.

"Are you some kind of _blarg-brain_ or something?" a heavily pimpled kid snorted through his retainer. "That's all insipid commercial pulp compared to the critically acclaimed _Mesopotamia Five!_"

"Okay, I am _so_ out of here," groaned Tuck, sneaking away from the full-blown war he'd just ignited. As Sheldon and a Blorg drone got into a vicious slap-fight over who was cooler, Captain Smirk or Ham Solo, Tuck made his way to an empty convention booth, quickly looked over the arrow navigation-keys on the teleporter, and enthusiastically mashed a new set of buttons. The chittering hiss of a freshly opened portal was drowned out by the squeals and howls of the nerd riot that had erupted behind him. Cinching the straps on his backpack, Tuck clutched tightly onto the handle of his new toy, and jumped into wormhole with boyish delight.

* * *

Jenny nibbled on the tips of her fingers with gear-wrenching angst, generating a fine dusting of iron filings that drifted down onto the theatre floor. Alcohol tears pooled up in her optic sensors; she deployed tiny wipers to keep her vision clear, so she wouldn't miss a minute of the greatest romantic drama in movie history. The Tremorton Rialto Theater was filled with emotion-choked teenage girls, staring intently at the big screen, hoping with all their hearts that the hunky Connor – played by teen heartthrob Ian McCauley – would leave that nasty, manipulative witch Veronica, and realize that his lifelong friend Jessie was actually meant to be his one true love. Jenny's torso quietly slid open to deploy a roll of tissues, which she kindly shared with the girls on either side of her. The big scene was coming up. The soundtrack built up with tear-jerking violins. Connor was about to make his decision …

And the mood was shattered as a screeching portal ripped open directly over Jenny's head, showering all of the girls in her row with hot buttered popcorn. Squeals of protest erupted as the startled robot girl wiped the greasy puffed kernels from her eyes, and looked up just in time to see a grinning little black-haired boy spill out of the wormhole, and land hard in her lap.

"_Uuunnghh_," she grunted, as if she'd just been punched in the belly. "TUCK! What the … how did …"

"Ha-haaaa! _Success!_" laughed Tuck, punching the air with victorious fists. This was _so cool_ – he was really starting to get the hang of the teleporter gizmo now! He'd snuck into the box seats at the baseball stadium, then he'd snuck behind the snack bar counter to help himself to a little popcorn, and now he'd snuck into the ultimate off-limits location for a grade schooler – a PG-13 movie! "Now nobody can tell Tucker Carbunkle where he can and cannot go! I can _finally_ go anywhere I want to, no matter what Mom or Dad or Brad says! I laugh at closed doors and locked gates! I …" – and only then did he look up and realize where he was sitting. "Oh, hi there Jenny! Say, any chance you happened to see where my popcorn bucket went?"

"I'm _wearing_ most of it!" she growled at him. "Tuck … what on Earth are you _doing_ here?"

A dozen angry teenage girls turned as one. "SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

But while Jenny winced and sunk down into her seat, Tuck suddenly grew bold and indignant. "Hey, wait a minute!" he shouted. "You said that you couldn't take me to the Goop Zone because you had to go home and study battle strategy with your Mom. So I guess the real question should be … what are _you_ doing here, Jenny?" Imagine that! She had _fibbed_ to him! That was such a gross violation of a friendship's trust! Well, at least it was whenever someone _else_ did it to _him_.

The frenzied robot girl waved her arms, frantically trying to quiet the little fellow down. "I was just taking a break! I mean … I'm going to study later! That is …" – Jenny ducked, as volleys of popcorn and empty soda cups sailed towards her head. "Tuck, be quiet! You're going to get me kicked out of the movie! And this is the big dramatic scene where Connor picks …"

Tuck turned towards the screen with a flinched eyebrow. "You ditched me to watch some stupid romance movie?" he shouted. "Say, wait a minute … isn't this the one where he dumps _both_ girls and announces that he's becoming a priest?"

"NOOOOOOO!" shrieked every last girl in the theater, enraged that the climactic scene had been spoiled for them at the last minute. The mob rained down a fresh hail of candy wrappers and empty snack boxes on poor Jenny, forcing her to retreat into the protection of her Turtle Shell Mode. Tuck shrugged his shoulders, not understanding what the big deal was all about … then scampered towards the theater's rear exit, eager to get on with his _next_ abuse of the teleporter. With the press of a button, another portal spawned open in the back wall, and Tuck leapt through, disappearing with a quick flash of light.

Which meant that Jenny had nobody to blame the ruckus on when the two stern-faced ushers marched down the aisle, like a pair of prison guards ready to escort her to a holding cell. Despite her pleas of innocence, the ushers escorted the horrifically embarrassed robot girl out of the theater, to the cruel cheers of everyone around her. Blue-cheeked, frustrated and boiling over with anger, Jenny stomped away with tiny lightning bolts leaping from her cheeks, leaving a trail of cracked sidewalk behind her.

She didn't even see Drew sprinting down the other side of the street, twisting his dish-head around in a frantic search for the same little boy who'd just ruined her afternoon.

* * *

The soft, soothing strains of classical music wafted through the elegantly decorated dining room, and tuxedo-clad waiters breezed about the tables with silver trays and bottles of champagne. Lace curtains, silk tablecloths, and fine art on the walls left no doubt in the minds of the restaurant's patrons that _Le Bistro Swankée Foo Foo_ was the most upscale dining experience to be had anywhere in Tremorton. It certainly was reflected in the prices, Brad gulped to himself, as he tugged uncomfortably at the knot in his tie. He was going to be mowing lawns for _months_ to pay for this dinner – but it would be worth it, if it impressed the cute blonde girl sitting across the table from him. Some people might say that Kiki was a little on the high-maintenance side, but to Brad, that just meant she had high standards. _Which should be obvious to anyone, since she did dump Dom Prima for me_, he smirked. Of course, that was after she had dumped Brad in the _first_ place – _ehh_, details. Kiki looked amazing in her new red dress, she was laughing at his jokes, and the date had gone flawlessly so far. It was time for the ol' Bradster to turn on the charm.

"So, my little chocolate chip Kiki," he grinned, "see anything here that looks good enough to eat?" He wiggled his eyebrows playfully. "Besides _me_, of course."

"Ohh, stop it, Braddums," she snickered … and then the most peculiar thing happened. A bright flash of light pulsed from underneath their table – accompanied by a weird chittering _hissing_ sound, and a swirling puff of air against her legs. "Yikes!" she squealed. "What was that?"

"Probably just the air conditioning kicking in," said Brad, eager to keep the mood alive. "You're so _hot_, they're probably worried that the whole building is going to melt."

"Oh, you …" – then Kiki twitched her head, in confusion. "Brad, do you hear that? That sounds like somebody … _chuckling_, under the table."

"All I can hear is the angels singing your name," he swooned. "Hey, all right, our salads are here!" He checked a tiny cheat sheet of useful French phrases that he'd folded inside of his left shirt cuff. After all, French _always_ made the girls go crazy. "Ah, trays bee-yins! _Mer-see, Gar-kone_."

The waiter rolled his eyes and walked away, leaving Brad and Kiki to get started on their meals. However, to Kiki's surprise, when she reached down for her salad fork …

"My fork fell on the floor," she puzzled. "Weird … it's like somebody pulled my napkin off the table."

"Not to worry, my sweet," said Brad, eager for the chance to be chivalrous. He rose from his chair …

And fell _flat on his face_, like a felled redwood tree. Somehow, Brad's shoelaces had gotten tied together in _triple knots_. He slammed hard into the floor, arms flailing like a baby bird trying to fly – but his troubles were just beginning. Somehow, the fancy silk tablecloth had gotten tucked inside of his belt. Brad's momentum yanked the tablecloth clear off the table in one mighty jerk, catapulting every last plate, glass, and utensil into the air. Salad dressing splattered all over Brad, Kiki, and the horrified diners at the surrounding tables. The basket of rolls landed twenty feet away, plunking down in the lobster tank. A goblet of ginger ale spiraled into the air, and spilled itself all over Kiki's new dress. And finally, the fancy plates crashed to the floor in a crescendo of shattering china.

Wiggling his bound legs back and forth, Brad managed to get himself flipped over. Kiki wailed in agony as she plucked romaine lettuce from her hair. Two furious waiters stood over Brad, with an intimidating manager glaring down between them. And underneath the table …

Underneath the table was a _dead little rat_, laughing himself silly.

"TUUUCK!" Brad yelled, his face beet-red with rage. He clumsily lunged at Tuck, but only succeeded in tumbling to the floor one more time. "You little _runt!_ You're dead meat, you hear me! Dead meat! You just wait till I get my hands on you! I'm going to give you the mother of all wedgies! I'll give you a purple nurple your grandkids will be talking about!"

Tuck wiped a tear from his eye, and activated the teleporter again. "You just can't _buy_ entertainment like that," he laughed, as he jumped through the vortex in the floor.

In all the commotion, nobody noticed the silver-green teenage android run past the window like a scalded dog, desperately trying to catch up with his dimension-hopping little quarry.

* * *

Dr. Wakeman dug in her heels, grunted with all the strength that her diminutive frame could summon up, and slowly pushed the two-foot-thick reinforced-titanium door – the one labeled _Secret Underground Vault_ – until it slid shut with a loud, echoing _clang_. Wiping the perspiration from her wrinkled brow, she spun the combination lock a few times, and punched in the new twenty-digit access code that reactivated the laser grid, the swinging sawblades, the motion-seeking missiles, the flamethrowers, the automated phaser cannons, _and_ the auto-tracking fifty millimeter machine gun which all combined to protect the super top secret technology she kept locked up inside. She collapsed against the cold metallic door, her lungs heaving as she struggled to catch her breath; voyaging into her Secret Vault was a _little more_ demanding than simply fetching a jar of marmalade from the pantry. Which made it all the more perplexing as to just _how_ her youngest neighbor had managed to get inside.

She shushed Tuck away from the Vault's door, corralling him towards the basement stairs with an old broom. "Get upstairs, you little misanthrope! Heavens to Heterodyne, Tucker, what were you thinking? Going into my Secret Vault like that? You're lucky to be alive!" She gave him a little swat on the bum to coax him up the stairs.

"Chill out, Mrs. Wakeman!" Tuck patted his backpack, with a smug little smile. Two-foot-thick steel doors and a super alarm system were no problem for a guy with his own _teleporter_. "I just wanted to have a little look around. Y'know, say hi to Jenny's sisters, check the Future Scope, see how those talking apes in the distant future are doing ..."

"Just wanted to look around? Just wanted to _look around_? In case you hadn't noticed, young man, this is not the public library!" Dr. Wakeman ran an exasperated hand through her disheveled hair as they reached the main floor. "That vault was designed to keep out a team of fifty trained commandos! And it _will_. I _know_. I hired a team of commandos to test it. They're recovering nicely. But _obviously_," she gasped, "I need to _redesign_ it to keep out a persistently troublesome seven-year-old paste-eater!"

"Hey, I don't eat paste!" Tuck protested. "Well, okay, I'm down to once a week."

"If only you could keep your bothersome _visits_ down to once a week," huffed the doctor, as she hurried Tuck out onto the front walkway. She slammed the front door behind him, and methodically twisted half a dozen locks and deadbolts, as if to silently add _and stay out_.

"Man, what got into her prune juice?" snorted Tuck, as he straightened out his shirt collar. Old people sure did act weird sometimes, for no reason at all that _he_ could see. Maybe she needed to stick some test tubes in the dishwasher, or something science-y like that. Oh well, he wasn't about to let a grumpy old coot rain on _his_ parade today.

Because the day was still young, and the whole city of Tremorton was laid open before him like the sumptuous all-you-can-eat pizza buffet at Will-E-Wombat's. Sweet freedom, at last! _Nobody_ understood how much it stunk being a little kid. Everyone was always bossing him around, telling him not to eat so much candy, telling him not to wander off by himself, telling him he couldn't stay up to watch the late night movie. It seemed like grown-ups spent all their time making up stupid rules, just to boss poor little kids like him around. Well, no longer! Tuck pulled his purloined teleporter out of his knapsack, feverish with the infinite possibilities for fun and mischief it represented. He could take another fun trip through a vortex, maybe to the shop floor of the Popsicle factory or the testing room at the video game store. Or maybe back to that fancy French restaurant – _snicker – I wonder if Brad realizes yet that I sprinkled itching powder on his date's shoes? – chuckle_ – Then a stroke of inspiration hit him. He could go to the mall, open a portal to the girl's bathroom, and toss in a stink bomb! That would be _classic!_

But it would have to wait until after he won the Goop Zone tournament. Popping from place to place in the blink of an eye, he was a shoo-in to win! He glanced at his watch; he'd frittered away a little more time than he realized with his horseplay, but it didn't matter. After all, the Goop Zone was only one little hyperspace-hop away! He'd be there in a matter of milliseconds. "I guess it's time for me to take my rightful place in the annals of Goop history," he grinned. He began to punch in a new series of arrow buttons …

When the teleporter was _snatched_ out of his hands, by the swipe of a silver-green robotic arm.

"Hey!" he shouted in protest. "What's the big …"

A six-foot green-striped android glared down at him, with eyes like a bounty hunter that had just tracked down an escaped convict. After running through the streets of Tremorton and chasing wormhole portals like a raving idiot, Drew had _finally_ caught up with the little vortex-jumping varmint. He braced his hands on his knees, chest heaving like a marathoner about to collapse at the finish line, and clutched tightly onto the handle of his missing teleporter as if he'd just discovered the Holy Grail. "_Finally_," he panted. "Man, I have _got_ to learn how to grow me some rocket engines out of my head."

"Drew!" Tuck smiled, completely unfazed by the android's appearance. "Hey, you're just in time! I was just about to use this bad boy to head on over to the Goop Zone. It's not too hard once you …"

"You're not using it to go _anywhere_. I've been chasing you around town for fifteen minutes!"

"Really? Huh … it seemed _longer_ than that."

Drew cocked his head as he re-absorbed his scanning dish, stunned at the brazenness of the little fellow. "Listen up, you little kleptomaniac," he gasped, struggling to keep his temper in check. "You're lucky I don't use this thing to send you to the South Pole!"

Tuck planted his little fists on his hips, bristling at the accusation. "I didn't _steal_ it! I _found_ it. I mean, it was carelessly lying right there in your knapsack – I couldn't _help_ but find it! And you know what they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law." Tuck had a rather twisted take on the whole concept of _private property_. "If anything, this is all _your_ fault. You're lucky I didn't zap myself to China!"

"_Gshnxxxrt_ … _MY_ fault!" Drew started counting to a million again …

"That's okay, don't beat yourself up about it," smiled Tuck. "I forgive you! Tell you what, you let me borrow your way cool teleporter gizmo for a couple of hours, and I'll forget the whole thing."

"Gee, let me give that some careful thought," sneered Drew, resting a sarcastic finger against his chin. "I'm going to have to go with … _no freaking way_."

"But you weren't even _using_ it for anything! It was just sitting in your knapsack!" Tuck grew angry as he realized that his ticket to fame and freedom was slipping out of his fingers; just like always, someone bigger than him was telling him what he couldn't do and where he couldn't go. "I'll give it right back! I just need it to win the Bot Buster tournament! C'mon, what are _you_ going to use it for? You need to rush back to the mall and sell some more hot dogs?"

"This isn't a negotiation, Tuck," growled Drew, "and I do _not_ have the time to deal with you right now. Look, we're right next to your place." They were still standing right in front of the Wakeman house. Drew picked the youngest Carbunkle up by the straps of his knapsack, and glared into his unapologetic little face. He'd never wanted to strangle a small child so _badly_ before in his life. _No jury would convict me_. But like he'd just said – he didn't have time to waste on the little twerp right now. Drew tossed Tuck over the hedge, and the little guy landed in his front yard with a solid _thump_ on his bottom. He got to his feet, and shot Drew a nasty look that could have peeled the paint off a fender.

"Just … try to stay out of trouble for ten minutes," said Drew, stabbing an authoritative finger at him. He called up a mission file from his molecular memory. "I'll be _right back_."

Drew stomped a few steps away, and tried to settle down his jangling circuits. He checked the running clock in his computer-vision. How long had it been since he'd spoken with Allison on the hyperwave? Seventeen minutes? _Sheesh_, it felt like seventeen _hours_. The Cluster Underground must be wondering if he was trying to _walk_ to that stupid asteroid. For crying out loud, how was he supposed to deal with the Cluster Army when he couldn't even deal with Brad's little brother? "Sorry about Earth being destroyed, guys, but man – that seven-year-old was a lot tougher to handle than I expected!"

He smacked himself in the forehead – this was _not_ the time to spaz out about Tuck. He had plenty of _other stuff_ to spaz out about. His subroutines chewed through the numbers from Allison's communiqué, and retrieved the galactic coordinates for the Anywhere Cannon's asteroid base. He pulled up a computer blueprint of the base, and picked out a nice deserted service tunnel to jump into.

"All right, pull yourself together, Nabholtz," he muttered, as he entered the new settings into his teleporter. Time to enter Mission Mode. Time to get serious. Time to forget all about his overprotective Mom, and his stupid fast food job, and that weaselly little suck-up brat who played his Mom like a fiddle and made him look like a bad guy and ransacked his bedroom and stole his teleporter and embarrassed him in front of Ally and made him run around town like a chicken with his head cut off and was such an _irritating spoiled little_ … _snxxxshrffl_ … _Pant. Pant. Pant._ "Okay, we had a little excitement there," he said to himself, with forced calmness, "a little unforeseen complication. Happens all the time. It'll make for a wacky story over petro-shakes at Oil Can Joe's, after the mission is done."

The important thing was, he was ready to jump _now_. Drew quieted his nano-circuits, and went over the mission in his head one more time. Jump to the asteroid. Sabotage the force field, so the Underground can blow up the Anywhere Cannon. Jump _off_ the asteroid.

It didn't sound too bad, when he thought about it like that. In and out. Simple. He'd done sabotage missions before. This one wouldn't be any different. Right?

A miniature bolt of energy leapt from the tip of the teleporter, and circumscribed a six-foot-wide circle, as if it were carving a hole out of the very fabric of space. With a pulse of light and a familiar chittering sound, the hyperspace portal opened up to reveal an infinite realm of insanely flickering colors. It was a real-life magic portal, a doorway leading from the mundane realm of everyday suburban life into a bizarre, dangerous, alien unknown. Drew never got used to the surreal dichotomy of the whole thing. On this side of the portal, his greatest worry in life was making sure that the fry vats at Wonder Weenie were set to the right temperature. But on the _other_ side …

He leapt through the vortex, and immediately lost all sense of direction and orientation. Light and color screamed by him too fast to register as more than mere after-images. It was difficult to even identify which direction you were traveling in when you passed through a wormhole; it felt like riding a zero-gravity waterslide, while you were stuffed inside a washing machine. But with experience, you could tell when you were about hurtle out of the other end …

A flash of light, a swirl of wind, and Drew stumbled out into the middle of a long, dark, corridor. Instinctively, he slammed his back against the wall, and quickly scanned left and right to make sure that nobody had seen him arrive. The corridor was actually a tunnel carved out of cold, hard rock, reinforced with durable ceiling beams of gunmetal grey; with a quick wave of distortion, his body repainted itself in textured dark browns, rendering him nearly invisible to any observer. The faint crackle and hum of high-tech machinery hung in the background, punctuated by the occasional sound of shouted military orders and the marching of robot soldiers. The stark artificial lighting and reduced gravity both served to reinforce the alienness of the environment; _I don't think we're in Kansas anymore_.

_Okay_, he thought, _better get started_. He had a force field to deactivate. _I've already wasted enough time._

He carefully snuck towards one end of the tunnel, where the glow of the light was a little brighter. The tunnel let out into an intersecting larger corridor, which had a rectangular viewing window cut out of its curved wall. The robot boy tiptoed up to the window … and stared in awe.

Below him was a massive cavern that was easily large enough to hold a football stadium. The cavern walls were rimmed with levels of scaffolding and metal grating, which held row upon row of computer screens and monitoring equipment, like an ancient NASA mission command room. Hundreds of Cluster roach-drones serviced the monitoring stations, working at a feverish pace under the watchful eyes of hulking, fifteen-foot ant-bot guards. And hundreds more roach-drones with wrenches and torches swarmed over a gargantuan piece of lethal-looking machinery that sat in the middle of the great cavern. Drew recognized it from the stolen blueprints, but it was none the less impressive a sight to look at. The Anywhere Cannon. A two-hundred-foot cylinder tipped over on its side and bolted to the floor with steel tie-downs. Dozens of cyclotrons were clumped together at one end, sucking in the power of four fusion reactors to generate anti-protons, and pipe them into a gun barrel that could have doubled as a subway tunnel. Sitting in front of the business end of the cannon was a giant metal ring, fifty feet across, studded with electronics and connectors for thick power cables. It was the hyperspace portal, the part of the cannon that did the aiming. You could have driven four semi trucks through it, side by side. The sheer scope of the weapons engineering before him made Drew's knees feel like they were turning to fudge.

"Ho-lee _schnikey_," he gulped.

"You can say _that_ again," said an enthusiastic little voice.

Drew's nanobot innards froze in terror.

His eyes shrunk to the size of ball bearings.

He slowly turned his head, and looked down.

And his molecular circuits nearly fried themselves.

Tuck gave him a huge grin, and squashed his face up against the viewport glass, overflowing with youthful, hyper excitement. "Is this the coolest thing you've ever seen in your life or _what?_" he squealed, bouncing up and down to get a better view. "Man, when the Goop Zone says they're building a new addition – they don't fool around, do they?"

* * *

Continued in Chapter Six

* * *


	6. Going Commando

A/N – Man, that's one of the longest stretches of time it's _ever_ taken me to crank out a chapter. Sorry about that, folks. I wound up getting absolutely _no_ writing done over the Christmas break; lots of holiday busyness and family stuff came first. I went to visit my sister and nephew, and a wonderful little ankle-biter on the airplane gave me a cold. I'm really just getting over it now. Hope everyone is having a Happy New Year so far. Thanks for continuing to read the stories, and a special thanks (and hello) to some new readers who have just now stumbled over my crazy little fanfics. Glad you like Drew – it really means a lot to hear that somebody enjoys his character. He appreciates it! Now, let's see what kind of trouble that Tuck has gotten our android friend into this time …

* * *

The Anywhere Cannon

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Six – Going Commando

* * *

It was supposed to have been a nice, _quiet_ afternoon. 

Instead, Drew was thousands of light-years away from home, inside of a ten-mile-wide asteroid orbiting an uncharted double-star system. He was smack dab in the middle of a top secret Cluster military base, with death and danger awaiting him at every turn, on a critical mission to help the Underground destroy the most powerful weapon in the known universe. The asteroid held thousands of Cluster robots – vigilant guard droids, heavily armed ant-bots, trigger-happy laser-wielding roach troopers …

Oh, yes. And one precocious, black-haired seven-year-old with a Goop rifle.

Drew dropped to his knees and grabbed Tuck by the shoulders, in full-bore Freakout Mode. "Sweet sassy molassy – you _followed_ me? _Geez_, Tuck, what the heck do you think you're _doing?_"

"_Me?_ What do you think _you're_ doing?" Tuck shot back, folding his arms indignantly. "You were gonna leave me all by myself, unsupervised! _Tsk, tsk, tsk._ Not very responsible of you – I'm _very_ disappointed." Then a monster grin plastered itself on his face, and he spun around in a full circle, his eyes glistening like lights on a Christmas tree. "But none of that matters now that we're finally here! Oh man, I was beginning to think I was never gonna see the new Goop Zone section …"

"Wait … wait, wait, wait, you think that …" – Drew scratched his head – "… you think we're actually at the _Goop Zone?_"

"I set the coordinates on your teleporter doohickey myself," Tuck said, with a smug smile. "And as long as we're here … why don't you let me borrow it back for, say, an hour or so?"

"_Sheesh_, talk about a one track mind," Drew groaned, slapping his forehead. This kid was _killing_ him. "Okay, that tears it. I'm going to send you back to …"

His sentence was interrupted by the piercing wail of an alarm. Rotating lights dropped from the ceiling and bathed them in strobing shades of crimson. Drew gripped his chest in panic, certain that they'd tripped some kind of intruder alert – but he didn't hear anyone running down the corridor towards them. And they were _still_ the only two people standing in the observation blister.

Then the PA system clicked on with a familiar swaggering voice – the melodramatic booming of Commander Smytus. "All drones to your stations! Reactors to full power! Activate the aiming portal! Prepare to fire on my count! Five! Four! Three …"

"Oh no," gulped Drew. He pressed his face back to the viewport, where the source of the excitement was now only too clear. The Anywhere Cannon had flared to life, its generators and power conduits glowing with building energy. A dull roar emanated from the huge chamber, as the shafts and pistons of heavy support machinery roared up to full speed. The massive hyperspace portal hummed, and glowed, and exploded to life with a bright double-flash, generating a mesmerizing pinwheel of insane colors directly in front of the cannon's giant barrel. All at once, hundreds of Cluster robots dropped dark protective goggles over their optic sensors. There was a loud _snap_ of powerful electromagnets, a hiss of cryogenic vapor from the cooling coils, and a faint yellow glow …

The blast from the cannon was like a solar flare erupting from the surface of an angry star. Drew darkened his eyes, unable to look directly at the column of fire that screamed from the mouth of the massive gun. Amazingly, impossibly, the fifty-foot-wide shaft of deadly anti-protons raced into the hyperspace portal … and disappeared.

* * *

Millions of miles away, drifting high above a swirling soup of purple methane clouds, the sleek renegade starship _CSS Free Will_ was hiding in the shadow of a gas giant planet, impatiently scanning the asteroid belt with its passive sensors. On the starship's bridge, Captain Polaris stared out the windows and winced unhappily, clutching at his gurgling metallic abdomen. All this sneaking around in hostile space was going to give him a rust ulcer. His cruiser was running in silent mode, with its engines and weapons powered down to minimize the chance of detection by Smytus' forces. Even still, Polaris felt as exposed as if he were on the main stage at the Cluster Prime opera house. He marched back to one of the few illuminated screens, where a large scanner display plotted the tracks of hornet fighters on patrol. A large yellow circle in the middle of the screen highlighted the asteroid that housed the Anywhere Cannon. Polaris frowned. The asteroid's powerful force field was _still_ active, and fully charged. 

"Maybe your infernal boyfriend got the co-ordinates backwards," he sneered.

Allison huffed, gave him a nasty look, then returned her attention to the scanner master controls. "Oh, my boyfriend can read _just fine_, thank you," she muttered – but she was starting to grow concerned herself. Missions tossed together at the last minute had a _nasty_ habit of not going according to plan. And the way the hyperwave call with Drew had ended had struck her as being a little … _strange_. "All right, everyone, let's go over the attack trajectory one more time. It won't hurt to wait a few more …"

She was cut off by a sudden beeping from the sensor display. Her fingers flew over the keyboard in response, and a look of disbelief registered on her face. "That … that's impossible …"

The Underground robots looked on in curiosity, as the screen switched to long-range camera mode. It showed a picture of the innermost planet in the star system, a lifeless ball of rock and iron backlit by the thin gasses of the colorful nebula. An unnatural, swirling vortex of light was growing in form, a few thousand miles above its surface …

Then the vortex pulsed with a blinding double-flash – and a pencil-thin beam of scalding energy screamed out of the vortex, slamming into the planet like shining rapier. Cold, flinty rock instantly glowed with intense reds and yellows and whites … then the surface of the planet shuddered, and erupted with a nightmarish explosion, as if the mass of rock was giving birth to a baby sun. Allison shielded her eyes as the screen flickered, nearly overwhelmed by the brightness of the annihilation. Then the light subsided away, she refocused the scanners … and the fluid in her radiator nearly froze over.

Where there had once been a ball of cold rock, now hung a blood-red, fractured shell of a world with an ugly crater that covered half its face. Glowing rock and clumps of lava from the exposed core of the planet sprayed out into space, like a gigantic, fiery fountain.

"Oh, _sprockets_," gulped Allison. "That … is a _big_ gun."

"They just test-fired the Anywhere Cannon. And we just ran out of time," added Polaris, as he grabbed a swiveling boom microphone from the ceiling. "Missile room, this is the captain speaking. Fuel the missile and remove the safeties from the anti-matter warhead. And try not to blow my ship up while you do it, okay?" He turned off the microphone and glanced back to Allison. "I hope, for _all_ our sakes, that our little shape-shifting friend gets that force field turned off in a hurry."

"Oh, don't worry about him," grimaced Allison, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "I'm sure that … uh … he's … uh … formulating a brilliant master plan, even as we speak."

* * *

Drew's mouth flapped open and shut like a goldfish gasping for air. "_Double_ holy schnikey." 

Tuck pulled away from the observation viewport, got down from his tiptoes, and folded his arms with genuine satisfaction. "Those are some _mighty_ impressive special effects!" he grinned. "And believe me, _I'm_ a jaded twenty-first-century kid who's been raised on holographic CGI. _Nothing_ impresses me anymore! I certainly do appreciate solid production values from a theme park."

"Special … effects?" Drew's mind struggled to get back onto its original train of thought. "Oh … _riiiight_. At the Goop Zone. _Yeeeeeeeeahh_." His eyes twitched towards the flashing alarm lights, the blinking computer displays on the stone corridor walls, and the huge cavern full of heavy equipment that was laid out below their observation blister. "Which is … _exactly_ where we are. _Riiiiiiiiight_."

Drew pasted a car salesman's grin on his face; he was still unsure if this was one of his _better_ ideas. It was bad enough that Tuck had followed him through the wormhole. If the little fellow found out where he was, and just how much life-threatening danger he was in, he was liable to go completely mental, and attract all kinds of unwanted attention. From heavily armed, killer robot soldiers. So since Tuck _already_ thought that he was _actually_ at the Goop Zone – Drew figured that the easiest thing to do was to simply feed the illusion. And with a little bit of luck, he could teleport them both back to the _real_ Goop Zone in a few minutes, after his sabotage was over – and Tuck would never know he'd actually traveled halfway across the galaxy. Maybe. Well, it was the only idea Drew could think of off the top of his head. And with the Anywhere Cannon now live and on-line, he couldn't afford to waste another minute with his little wormhole stowaway.

"Tell you what, little buckaroo," Drew said, giving Tuck a pat on the head. "I'm going to head off to look for the … _er_ … _um_ … registration table. Yeah, that's it! Once I get you all signed up, I'll come back with your official tournament kit. You stay here, out of sight, and um … check on your Goop rifle, or something. Gotta make sure your weapon is in tip top shape, right?"

"Well, I did clean the barrel just this morning at the breakfast table." Tuck tapped his chin. "I supposed it wouldn't hurt to field-strip it one more time …"

"_That's_ the spirit! Now just stay right here, okay? _Right here_. I'll be back before you know it." He stuffed his teleporter into Tuck's backpack. "You hang onto this, make sure nothing happens to it, and I'll be back in five minutes. Got that? _Five minutes_. Then you can shoot as much Goop as your little heart desires!"

And without waiting for a reply, the teenage android turned and leapt into a long, graceful arc, squirting down the corridor in a bouncing ribbon of silver paste. With a soft gurgling whisper, his surface color changed to mimic the rocky pattern of the tunnel walls, and just like that, Drew suddenly dissolved into the shadows.

Tuck sat down in the far corner of the observation blister and made himself comfortable, feeling quite proud of his accomplishments so far. He'd made it to the Goop Zone – hmmm, it _did_ seem weird that there weren't any other kids around, but, eh, whatever – and he'd managed to have a lot of fun in the process. He pulled his MegaSoaker 400 out of his backpack and pumped the tank a couple of times, checking the action of the pressure piston. Then he reached into his backpack, fumbling for an oil can …

But instead of pulling out an oil can, his hand found the teleporter.

He drummed his fingers together with mischievous glee.

"You know what's even more important than a well-oiled weapon?" he grinned. "_Practice!_ Robot fighting takes lots and lots of practice. It wouldn't hurt to take a few practice shots before the tournament started, would it? _Hmmmm._ But Drew _did_ tell me to wait right here …"

Tuck gave the matter a few moments of thought, then defiantly pounded a fist into his open palm. "And just who died and made him President, _hmmm_? So Drew thinks he can give me _orders_ now, like he was my _father_ or something? The _nerve_! Denying a small child the simple pleasure of shooting slimeballs at a room full of mechanical dummies. He's drunk with authority, I tell you!"

When you were an overexcited seven-year-old, waiting in one single spot for five minutes was a torture indistinguishable from burning coals and hot pokers. The little fellow slung his rifle over his shoulder, clipped on some extra Goop ammunition cartridges, and wrapped a camouflage-colored bandana around his forehead, Rambo-style. A maniac glint flashed in his eye, as he started pressing arrow buttons on the teleporter once more.

"Time to bust me some Bots," he chuckled, as the vortex flashed open.

* * *

The lead drone engineer turned from his workstation and gave his commanding officer a proud salute. "All energy readings are perfectly normal, Commander," he grinned. "The Anywhere Cannon is ready for operational duty!" 

Smytus grinned at the master viewscreen, which showed the target planet continuing its breakup into a glowing ball of gravel. He thrust his massive fists into the air, as if he were celebrating a ninth-inning home run. "OOOOOH, YEAH! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" He rubbed his metallic claws together with barely constrained glee. "I have always told Queen Vexus that I preferred simple plans over her complicated schemes. Well, it doesn't get more simple than cracking a planet in half with a giant Death Ray! With the power of this cannon at my disposal, soon Earth will be at my mercy. Then nothing can stop me from conquering the entire galaxy!"

"Um … what about the XJ-9 robot?" asked the engineer.

Smytus snarled down at him. "You are _severely_ harshing my mellow, drone. Believe me, soon that miserable little robot girl will get what's coming to her. Vexus still wants her to join the Cluster? Well, I'll send XJ-9 to her … in an paper envelope."

The great Commander thrust his chest out as if he were posing for a portrait. "Drones! Complete system purge, and initiate re-cycle sequence! I want to be ready to shoot again in ten minutes!"

"_Ummm_," squeaked a drone, "what's our target, sir?"

A crooked smile grew on Smytus' face. "The planet Earth. North American continent. Set the co-ordinates for the city of Tremorton,"

* * *

Quick as a wink, a stream of silver-green goo flowed through the door, and slopped into a messy pile behind a row of large storage barrels. Drew reshaped himself into humanoid form as quietly as he could, but there was little chance of anyone noticing him _here_. The deafening noise from the spacecraft engines guaranteed _that_. A nervous pair of eyes stretched above the hiding place like a twin periscopes, observing the contents of the giant, round cavern. It was a Cluster spacecraft hangar, filled with nasty-looking Hornet interceptors and ant-shaped cargo shuttles. Dozens of busy worker drones scampered to and fro, pushing hover-dollies piled high with bombs and missiles and spare parts. Two Hornet fighters slowly crawled towards the center of the hangar, then with a sharp metallic _crack_ and the growl of heavy gears, the roof of the artificial cave split open, revealing the infinite star-speckled cosmos outside. The compact yellow-and-black interceptors slowly hovered up from the floor in the weak gravity, and disappeared into the asteroid belt on twin daggers of hot fusion exhaust. 

_Okay, let's get this over with_, Drew sighed to himself. He put a five-minute timer up in his vision – he'd told Tuck that he'd be back in five minutes, and he didn't feel good about leaving him alone for _that_ long – and crossed his fingers. Quick and dirty jobs like this tended to get _exciting_ in a hurry. But, with a little subterfuge, and a little luck, maybe things would stay nice and quiet this time. Keep it simple, subtle, and the less excitement, the better.

With a near-silent shimmer, the teenaged android boy morphed into an orange-and-yellow maintenance roach, complete with a wrench-laden tool belt hanging around his robotic waist. The first order of business on this mission was to find out where the force field controls for the Cluster base were located, so he could sabotage them. Drew figured he'd pick a drone at random, and use his magic nano-fingers to interrogate its computer brain for information; he just hoped that he could pull it off without drawing any attention to himself. He picked out a suitable target, a ragged, oil-stained worker drone who was wheeling a cart loaded with several dozen quart-sized cans of grease. Drew gulped hard, and then sauntered away from his makeshift hiding place, with the easy manner of a workman on a coffee break.

"Hey, ah, hold up there, buddy!" he shouted in a blue-collar accent, giving the grease-drone a casual wave. "Mind if I ask you a quick question?"

"Make it quick," groaned the worker, with a look of complete disgust on his insectoid face. "I gotta get this stupid grease delivered to a bunch of technicians over at Force Field Control."

Drew double-blinked. "Force Field Control?"

"That's what I said, pal. What, you got a tube blown in your hearing circuits or sumpin'?"

"Tell you _what_," Drew smiled, patting the surly drone on the shoulder. "I just happen to be heading over to Force Field Control. Why don't I take this grease over there for you?"

The tired drone instantly perked up. "Really? You mean it? Aw, buddy, that would be great! Hey, you're all right. I work down in the hydraulics shop. You ever need your tubing flushed, you come see me, okay? I'll set you up!"

"I'll keep that in mind. Umm … _what_ was the way to Force Field Control, again?"

"Big tunnel over there," the grease-drone said, gesturing with a pair of claws. "All the way to the end. Level Five, Sector Gamma. Can't miss it. Thanks again!"

"No, believe me, thank _you_," smiled Drew, as he grabbed the cart and wheeled his cases of grease cans across the equipment-strewn hangar floor. _Hey, that went easier than expected,_ he thought, as he swerved around an unloading cargo shuttle. Still, just to be safe, he avoided eye contact with the other robots, especially the heavy drone troopers with the semi-automatic laser rifles. But despite his worries, the other Cluster robots thought that he was just another nameless drone performing another menial task, and in moments he'd traversed the hangar with no problems, and was standing at the elliptical-shaped mouth of a long, smooth tunnel.

"Hey, you with the grease," a military drone called out to him.

_Uh-oh._ "Umm … yeah?" squeaked Drew. He tensed slightly, wondering if his cover had been blown …

"Could you use a ride?" said the soldier, gesturing to the back of his hover-truck.

"Uhhhhh … sure?"

In a mild state of disbelief, Drew thanked the big soldier drone and wheeled his cargo of grease cans onto the bed of the hover-truck, next to a pair of power transformers. He plopped down against a transformer with a dumb grin, and allowed himself to relax a tiny bit as the dim red tunnel lights flashed by. _I half-thought I was going to have to fight and sneak past the soldier drones, and instead, I'm bumming a ride from one!_ Not only were things going better than he could have imagined, but the guards weren't showing any signs that they even _knew_ an intruder was inside the base!

The hover-truck arrived at the end of the large tunnel, and Drew couldn't help but let out a low whistle. It was the massive cannon chamber, and if possible, it was even _more_ awe-inspiring on the inside. The cavern could have held a downtown city block, and there were enough drones, scientists, and soldiers walking around to populate a small robot town. The massive steel-gray barrel of the Anywhere Cannon sat immobile in the center of the room, pointing at a giant steel-gray portal ring; worker drones swarmed over it like ants over a cob of corn, preparing the weapon for its next deadly firing. That served to remind Drew of the short amount of time he had, and the seriousness of what he was trying to prevent. He quickly scanned the rings of platforms that lined the rocky walls of the cavern. According to his helpful friend, the force field controls would be found on Level Five.

One quick elevator ride later, the counterfeit Cluster drone ambled onto Level Five, counting off the sector markers as he wheeled his grease past stations labeled Defense Lasers and Long-Range Radar. It was just three more sectors to Force Field Control. Now for the last little hurdle – the technicians at the Force Field Control station. How was he going to convince them to allow him to do a little "repair work" on the control panel? He could say that he was doing a routine inspection. Or, maybe he could claim that he'd been given orders to perform preventative maintenance. He could always try the mind-control trick with his trusty nanobots. Worst-case scenario, he could knock them out …

One of the blue technical drones at Force Field Control looked up from his control panel, saw the yellow-and-orange maintenance drone in front of him, and frowned.

"Where the heck have you been?" he growled. "Sheesh, we put in an order for grease, like, an hour ago! I'm dying of thirst here!" The drone grabbed two cans, tossing one to his partner, and cracked the lid. "Bottoms up, Gamma Sixteen! To the enslavement of the human race!"

"Heh-heh, yeah … yay for us," babbled Drew. "Look, I was wondering if …"

"Hey, _you_," the second technician suddenly growled, pointing an accusing finger directly at Drew's chest. "Stop right there. Don't move a servo!"

A pang of panic stabbed at Drew's nanobot innards. "Me?"

"You're not going anywhere until we finally get this stupid light bulb fixed!" he snorted, pointing to an extinguished light on his complex control panel. "I have been bugging maintenance to get up here for the past three days and fix this. No more excuses, Jack. Now get to work!"

Drew blinked twice, and fought to keep a smile from splitting his face in half. "Why, I can't _tell_ you how sorry I am to hear that," he said, as he started loosening screws on the panel. "I'll get that taken care of for you, right away!" He flipped the panel open and crawled inside, like a mechanic getting underneath the hood of a car. He couldn't believe it! This was the very piece of equipment he was supposed to sabotage, the key to the whole Underground mission, and the Cluster robot had actually helped him flip open the lid! With a happy shimmer, Drew morphed his claw-fingers into an assortment of destructive tools, and stretched his thin appendages in amongst the dense bundles of wires and pipes. He actually struck up a happy tune as he went about his dirty work. With every snipped wire, shorted circuit, and damaged part, the asteroid's force field began to grow weaker and weaker.

_Geez, this is a piece of cake,_ he grinned to himself. _Nothing can go wrong now!_

While Drew hummed contentedly, the two technician drones started up an idle conversation over their grease break. "Hey, you wanna hear something funny?" one drone asked the other.

"Sure, make me laugh."

"I was flipping through the comm channels a second ago. Remember Omicron 219? That guy from the Reactor Room who won fifty bucks from me in that poker game?"

"What about him?"

"I just saw him on a security dispatch." The first technician drone slapped his knee, chuckling cruelly. "The big jerk was covered head to toe in green, sticky slime! Said he saw some kind of … _miniature human_ running around in the caves, shooting green goop at everyone. What a screwball!"

The entire console shook with a painful _THUD_.

"OW! _Ahh, geez, criminy_ …" The stammering orange-and-yellow maintenance drone shot out from under the control panel like he'd been hit with a million volts. "Did you just say … _human!_" babbled Drew, rubbing the fresh dent on top of his dome-head.

"Yeah, little short one," answered the drone, holding his claw about waist high. "Black fur on its head …"

Their conversation was interrupted by the shrill wail of an alarm, screeching from the control panel. "Warning! Warning!" chanted a synthesized voice. "Total power loss on Force Field. Force Field has collapsed. Force Field has collapsed."

The two technician drones nearly jumped out of their metal shells, and looked at Drew with accusing stares. At first, Drew didn't understand why … then he realized that in his startled hurry to pull himself out of the guts of the control panel, he'd unwittingly pulled out two fistfuls of electronic parts and transistor tubes, which he was still holding onto, for all to see.

"Umm … okay, I have a really good explanation for this …"

"WHAT in the name of Sweet Queen Blessed Vexus is going ON up here?" bellowed a furious voice, coming from directly behind him.

The technician drones snapped to rigid attention. Drew winced and ground his teeth together; he recognized the voice all too well.

He slowly turned around, and stared up into the imposing form of Commander Smytus.

_Oh, crap._

Smytus planted his metallic fists on his hips, and glared down at Drew with a face full of cold hate. "Good explanation? You had _better_ have a good explanation for turning off my asteroid's force field. Especially since I don't recall ordering it to be _turned off!_"

"Well, you see … um …." – Drew hid his fistfuls of sabotaged parts behind his back – "… now, what happened was, I had to, uh … that is … would you believe, I was replacing a light bulb?"

Smytus did _not_ look satisfied with the explanation. His eyes narrowed into hateful slits, and he leaned closer to examine Drew's face …

And _that_ was when, with a bright double-pulse of multi-colored light, a chittering vortex ripped open, twenty feet away.

And out tumbled an overstimulated seven-year-old, pumping the barrel of a MegaSoaker 400 Goop rifle.

"WOW!" screamed Tuck, as he spilled onto the platform's metal grating. "Would you _get a load_ of this place! I must have found the Super Robot Challenge Bonus Final Level! Oh, wow, there must be more robots in here than … than there are on all of _Cluster Prime!_ I'm gonna get the high score for sure! Hot ziggety, this is ten times better than Wizzly World! _Woo hooooo!_"

Smytus stared at the giddy human child in stunned surprise for a few seconds, then slapped his face and shouted in a loud, frustrated voice. "What … is _that_ … doing here? _Arrrghhh_, you stupid drones, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times … no _pets_ on Cluster military property!"

Tuck stared with wonder-filled, twinkling eyes, through sweat-soaked swaths of jet-black hair, taking in the grandeur of the huge cannon chamber. His red cheeks were flush with physical exertion; the kind of flush a young boy gets from running around like a maniac, jumping crazily through alien wormholes, teleporting around inside a hollow asteroid, shooting Goop at unsuspecting Cluster robots. Because Tuck was _still_ convinced that he was inside of the new Goop Zone robot fighting arcade – and he was convinced that it was the most super awesomemest best most fun place in the whole wide world! He spun his Goop rifle in his hands, hot-dogging like a band leader twirling a baton. "Surrounded on all sides by bloodthirsty zombie robots, Ultra Commando Tuck Carbunkle seems doomed to certain catastrophe! But no mere pile of scrap metal can hope to defeat everyone's favorite Bot Buster in combat! Ha-ha! Have at you, vile clockwork villains!"

And with another dramatic flourish, Tuck spun his Goop rifle back to his shoulder, and unleashed a pair of green slime-wads into the chests of the stunned technician drones. The robots were so bewildered from Tuck's routine that none of them budged so much as a servo.

"That's twenty more points for me!" cheered Tuck … then he stared past the three shorter drones in front of him, up at the towering silhouette of Commander Smytus, and clutched his little hands together with rapturous glee. _Look at the size of that audio-animatronic robot!_ It had to be the Battle Droid Supreme Commander! _Nobody_ ever made it all the way to the Battle Droid Supreme Commander! According to the official tournament scoring guide, the Supreme Commander was worth one thousand points! If you added a thousand points to his score, Tuck figured that his point total would come to … um … probably, like, a gazillion billion jillion points! He'd win for sure! Finally, fame and fortune … and getting his picture in the paper … were just mere moments away!

"_Omigosh_ … I made it all the way to the final Boss Level," he grinned. "This is it! I'm gonna be in the Goop Zone Bot-Buster Hall of Fame!"

Smytus arched a perplexed eyebrow. "Goop Zone?"

Drew simply stared straight ahead, with a nervous twitch tugging at his lower left eyelid.

It seemed surreal, happening all too fast to react, yet it was like watching a television scene in slow motion. Tuck pumped the handle on his rifle once, twice, three times, to get a nice high-pressure stream from his weapon. The two blue technician drones cowardly flinched, diving to get out of the way. Drew started to lunge towards Tuck, hoping to stop him before … too late. The little commando sighted his target through the MegaSoaker's aiming scope, his little finger wrapped around the plastic trigger … and he pulled.

"Hasta la vista, baby," Tuck quipped, squinting his eyes.

A blob of green Goop _smacked_ Smytus square in the face like a massive spitball.

"_Yesssss!_" shouted Tuck, jubilantly thrusting his fists in the air. "Fame and fortune, here I come! All bow before me, King Tucker the First … Master of all Bot Busters! For the record, I'd like my prize paid to me in one installment, not annual payments, please."

Thin jets of superheated steam hissed out of the sides of Smytus' head.

"YEAAARRRRGHH!" he shouted, furious at the insult that had just been dealt to him. Smytus' eyes glowed yellow with near-insanity, burning off the remnants of slimy Goop that obscured his vision. He clenched his claws into massive fists, which started to growl with green plasma energy, and deployed a pair of long, vicious prongs that sizzled like cattle prods. With a snap of his metallic wrists, he took aim at the grinning half-sized human prankster …

"Oh, _crap_!" Drew instinctively launched himself into a silver-green river of nano-paste, reaching Tuck just as Smytus fired his wrist cannons. The momentum of the shiny goo knocked Tuck into a wild backwards somersault, rolling him and Drew out of the way just as a pair of green plasma bolts blasted a smoldering scorch mark into the metal grating.

"The _nanodroid_," sneered Smytus, as if the word itself were a filthy rag. "GUARDS!"

The silvery paste reformed into a green-striped android, with a grinning, rifle-toting grade schooler sitting in his lap. "Oh, hi there, Drew!" Tuck chirped excitedly, completely oblivious to the danger he was in. "Did you see what I just did! I slimed the Supreme Commander! I won the Goop Zone tournament! Isn't that awesome? Man, this is the greatest day of my life!"

The teen android flinched with dread, as he heard a telltale _whining_ sound from all around him that could only come from laser cartridges charging up. After that came the _click-click-click-click_ of firing safeties being switched off. Drew hesitantly cracked one eye open, to see that Level Five was now filled with heavy drone soldiers, on both sides of him, each with the barrel of a laser rifle pointed directly at his chest. Another batch of drone soldiers was directly below him on Level Four. And another squad was marching into position on the landing immediately above him. One, then two, then forty-six tiny red dots danced over his body, as the drone troopers trained their laser sights on him. Commander Smytus folded his arms in disgust, and grinned an evil grin down at the two pathetic intruders.

"Huh, I must have gotten a free game," said Tuck. "Gee, could this day _get_ any cooler?"

* * *

Captain Polaris paced back in forth on the darkened bridge of the _CSS Free Will_, quietly impatient, when a soft electronic beep from the master scanner grabbed everyone's attention. Allison's slim metal fingers quickly and efficiently flashed over her console keyboards, filling the screen with a close-up view of the Cluster's secret asteroid base. All the Underground robots looked on, as data windows popped onto the screen, showing reduced power outputs and diminished electromagnetic readings. With a confident smile, Allison slowly spun around in her seat and crossed her long, svelte leg housings. 

"Drew did it – the asteroid's force field is down, Captain," she said, with a tight smile. Her eyes delivered the unspoken message: _I told you so_. "The Anywhere Cannon is now vulnerable."

"About time," grunted Polaris, as he quickly paced back to his command chair. "Missile room, this is the captain speaking. Finalize missile trajectory. Set warhead yield for 7.5 gigatons. Commence ten-second countdown sequence … _now_."

"_Whoa!_" shouted Greaser. "Like, the nanodroid dude is still _inside_ that big hunk of rock! And you're just gonna totally wax him? _Duuuude_, that's cold! Can't we wait for him first?"

"He knows what the plan is," snarled Captain Polaris. "Besides, we've been floating around in hostile territory half an hour longer than intended, already. We're lucky we haven't been spotted by one of the Hornet interceptor patrols. If we don't shoot now, we may never get another chance."

A few robots looked towards Allison, expecting her to challenge Polaris' decision, but she knew he was right. She couldn't play favorites when the fates of entire planets hung in the balance. With a tortured sigh, she closed her eyes, and gave Polaris a nod.

The captain slammed his metallic fist onto a large red button on his armrest …

And the entire hull of the _Free Will_ shuddered with a deep, resonating vibration.

Long doors split apart on the bottom of the star cruiser and swung open, exposing a large launcher platform that swiveled out into space. Metal rings on the platform hummed with a sudden flood of electricity, spawning a powerful magnetic field that grabbed a long, sleek, smoke-colored dart, and hurled it into space with the force of a cannon shot. Silently, the stealth cruise missile glided into the cold, inky black, until it was five miles away from the ship. Then its on-board computer deployed a set of fins and thrusters, armed its warhead, and gave its fusion engine the command to fire. The powerful fusion rocket ignited with the ferocity of a stellar core, washing out the stars with its harsh yellow glare, but just as quickly as it had overwhelmed the senses, it was gone. The cruise missile shrunk into a tiny pinprick of light, traveling at fantastic speed, and curved around the gas giant planet, heading for the asteroid belt.

One _certain_ asteroid, in particular.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Seven

* * *


	7. In the Crosshairs

A/N – This chapter is really long. But if you like action, you'll enjoy it! Fasten those seatbelts!

* * *

The Anywhere Cannon

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Seven – In the Crosshairs

* * *

The tapered missile sliced through interplanetary space like a black arrow. Its silhouette was devoid of harsh angles or straight lines, all the better to deflect away any sensor beams. Its coal-colored paint had been selected to eliminate glints of light that might betray its location. Even the brilliant tail of hot fusion exhaust was channeled through a shaped magnetic nozzle that shielded ninety percent of the heat. The cruise missile was all but invisible to its unfortunate target. Under _perfect_ conditions. 

But the long fire-tail _was_ visible from the side, if someone happened to fly close enough. And the formation of four Cluster Hornet interceptors, out on routine patrol, was definitely close enough.

Two Hornets banked into a tight turn and slammed their throttles to the wall, racing to catch up with the swift cruise missile. The other two interceptors took the opposite heading, towards a purple gas giant, and powered up their active scanners.

_Somebody_ had fired that missile. And they were going to find out who.

* * *

Drew did a slow pan of the vast chamber, making a count of the rifle barrels that were currently pointed in his direction. One hundred and eighty-three. _Just beautiful._ Heavy drone troopers, standing three abreast, had him totally surrounded on the platform, with even more soldiers deployed above and below, cutting off all possible avenues of escape. Two more squads of laser-toting drones marched onto the floor, taking up firing positions on him from every conceivable angle. His shoulders slumped with a dejected groan; he vowed right then that, if he somehow managed to survive this screw-up, he'd give the Underground leaders a little lesson on a great Earth scientist named Murphy, and his very famous Law. _Then_ he was going to thank Brad for dumping Tuck on his case, by kicking his weasel-butt into the middle of next Thursday. Drew winced as the little black-haired tormentor fidgeted to get comfortable in his lap, then looked up to meet the triumphant sneer plastered across Smytus' face. 

"_Heh-heh_ … 'sup, dude," he croaked, giving the Cluster commander a feeble wave. "_Heh-heh_ … fancy bumping into you again today. Wow. What are the chances, huh?"

"Not nearly as good as the chances of _you_ being reduced to a pile of cinders!" bellowed the robot warrior. "You absurd little slush-brained nano-fool! Did you actually think you could sneak onto my secret asteroid base, sabotage my precious doomsday cannon, and thwart my ingenious plans for total galactic conquest?"

"Uh, _well_ …" – Drew gave his shoulders a meek shrug – "… I _was_ cautiously optimistic …"

"Hey, you know what I just realized?" Tuck – still blissfully clueless as to the amount of true peril he was in right now – snapped his fingers, trying to coax his memory along. "The theme park guys built this Supreme Commander droid to look like someone familiar! Yeah, look at those ugly orange eyes, and that stupid giant zit growing out of the middle of his forehead …"

Electric sparks crackled from the commander's reddening cheeks. "_Grrrrrr …_"

"… And look at his teeth! Ha, ha, ha, you could kick a field goal through the gap in those teeth! I think he needs to go to the dentist for some robo-braces … oh, wait, that's it! You know who this big doofus reminds me of?"

Drew groaned, and shook his head. "Tuck, say hello to Commander Smytus. Tuck, Smytus. Smytus, Tuck. _Groan._ You just couldn't sit still for five stinking minutes, could you?"

"Huh? What? You … you mean the _real_ Smytus?" Tuck twisted around, with a confused-puppy expression on his face. "_Wha-choo-talkin-bout-Drew?_"

Smytus folded his arms across his massive chest, glared down at the boys, and snorted in disgust. "The traitors in the Underground must truly be desperate these days – bad enough they employ an abomination like _you_, nanodroid, but now they're using trained monkeys, too? How pathetic!" He raised an arm to signal his robotic legions, and snarled at Drew with a cruel grin. "What a glorious day this shall be! In moments, we shall destroy XJ-9, and everyone else on her pitiful planet. And now, nanodroid … _ohhh_, how you've plagued me these months, like an infuriating pebble stuck in my gears … for all the grief you've caused me, I get to watch you reduced to a cloud of silver flakes! How I will _enjoy_ your cries of agony! Drones! Arm your weapons! Ready! AIM! FI …"

"_Commander!_" shouted a frantic robot voice.

Smytus convulsed wildly. "WHAAaaAAAAT?" he screamed in frustration.

A blue technician drone ran up and delivered an anxious salute. "Sir, Hornet patrols have detected a high-speed bogey, inbound! It looks like a cruise missile!"

"The _Underground_," snarled Smytus. He whipped around to face his captives once more, and his barbed forearm began to glow with green plasma energy. "Tell me everything you know about this cruise missile attack, nanodroid … or watch your little pet monkey be _vaporized_."

Tuck started to shake as a nasty, glowing prong snapped out of Smytus' wrist, and pointed right towards his nose. "B-b-but I'm too young to be v-v-vaporized!"

Drew grit his teeth, and wrapped a pair of protective arms around Tuck's belly. Captured data files and base schematics flickered up in his enhanced vision. His sneaking-around plan had fallen apart like a tower of Popsicle sticks; well, now it was time to improvise. He surveyed the robot troops that surrounded them, noting their positions on a digitized floor plan in his computer mind. "Tuck, when I say so," he whispered into the boy's ear, "add another thousand points to your Bot Buster score. Understand?"

"Th-th-thousand points … huh? _Oh!_" Tuck clutched his Goop rifle to his chest with shaking hands. He gulped hard, and slipped a white-knuckled finger down towards the trigger … and felt a weird vibration against his tummy. Drew's arms began to warble with subtle patterns of shimmering distortion …

"No more delays, nanodroid," growled Smytus. "You have until the count of ten to talk! One … two …" – his wrist-prong crackled to life with emerald plasma – " … _nine_ …"

"_Now!_" snapped Drew – as his body dissolved into a curtain of silver-green sludge.

Tuck swung his MegaSoaker 400 up and fired three blind shots, landing the last one right between Smytus' eyes. The Cluster commander staggered backwards a step, and shouted the order to fire at will. Hundreds of robotic fingers squeezed hundreds of triggers on hundreds of laser rifles …

As Drew finished flowing his nanobot body _around_ Tuck, encapsulating him in a spherical shell. A final ripple of distortion smoothed over the sphere's surface, a millisecond before a huge volley of laser blasts roared out in unison. Hundreds of red-hot ruby lasers slammed into the shiny sphere all at once …

And _bounced off_. Drew had grown a layer of perfectly smooth quartz on the outside of his shell, reflecting the lasers away like a mirror. To the soldiers' horror, beams of zigzagging ruby-red leapt out from their target at crazy angles, carving into equipment, blasting holes into metal grating, and ricocheting into the bodies of their comrades. Sharpshooters who had taken dead-center aim actually managed to shoot _themselves_ in the chest. Coolant pipes burst, cryogenic gas hissed into the air, and monitors exploded into showers of glass. A section of metal plating gave way, sending six drone troopers plunging five stories down to the rocky floor. But the drones kept shooting, not realizing that the return fire was, in fact, coming from their _own_ rifles. Finally Smytus, who had instinctively used an unfortunate technician as a shield, shouted over the suffering and gave the order to _cease fire_.

A silver-green fist burst through the charred sphere. The shell cracked open; Drew sprang out and hurdled over Smytus' head, with Tuck clinging onto his back for dear life. Freshly-grown claws sunk into the overhead platform – and the terrified android sprinted _upside-down_ on the ceiling, madly dodging left and right in a race for the exit. Still-smoldering drones swung their rifles towards the ceiling, and let loose with a fresh burst of disorganized laser fire. Chunks of metal grating blasted into hot slag all around Drew's hands and feet. Tuck screamed in horror as the world whizzed by, topsy-turvy – then saw the drone-arms swing up at him with grabbing claws …

But Drew jumped sideways, over the metal railing, and grew two of his fingers into long, carbon-fiber cables. He swung clumsily from a support strut, like a stunt man in a bad jungle movie, twisting and flexing his body to shield Tuck from the scattershot laser fire. A well-aimed blast sliced through his cable-fingers, and they fell the last six feet to the Level Four platform. The silver-green blob curled his body around his young passenger, and used their collective momentum to plow over three roach-drones like a giant bowling ball. Dizzy and desperate, and with lasers hitting him in the back, he scrambled through the exit, slapping the big red Emergency Lockdown button on the way through.

* * *

Allison frowned at the brightly colored graphics on the _Free Will's_ large computer display. The missile's trajectory looked to be picture-perfect. Polaris and the others anxiously tracked its progress; she watched as well, but every few seconds she shot an anxious glance towards the rear of the bridge, hoping to see the flash of a spawning vortex. "Okay, Drew …" she grumbled to herself, nervously drumming her fingers. "Any _time_ now …" 

Urgent tones rang out from a smaller monitor. Greaser spun his chair around – and yelped in alarm. "_Whooaaaa_, dudes! There's like, two enemy Hornets heading right for us! And they're locking their weapons! _Bogus!_"

"Warm up the particle beams!" shouted Polaris. "Get the engines up to …"

The floor heaved up and tossed the Underground robots about the bridge like empty soup cans. The Cluster interceptors had unleashed a barrage of rocket fire upon the _Free Will_, hitting it broadsides while she was configured for silent running. An explosion ballooned out from the engineering section, and the Hornets looped around for another pass. But the rebels quickly got back to their posts, and they frantically brought sensors and reactors to full power. A vicious exchange of lasers spat back and forth through cold space, as the nimble interceptors buzzed around the wounded cruiser. The forward hull took a direct hit, knocking the targeting computer off-line. Allison alertly plugged her arm into a console socket, letting her adaptive software take the place of the damaged computer – and a blizzard of high-speed shots erupted from the _Free Will's_ particle guns, ripping the Hornet interceptors into metallic shreds.

Sighs of relief arose on the bridge, but Polaris was definitely unhappy. "Great, our engines are down," he grimaced. "And at the risk of stating the obvious – the Cluster knows we're here now."

* * *

Smoke still wafting from his back, Drew ran his hands along the sides of the emergency door, letting his nanobots fuse it into the doorframe. Robotic fists pounded on the other side, trying in vain to open the now-solid slab of metal. The substation they'd escaped into was roughly the size of a school classroom. There was an open archway in the far wall; Drew scrambled to the side of room, ripped out a heavy control console, and frantically started to build a barricade to keep Cluster reinforcements from getting in. It would only hold troops at bay for a short time, but that was all that he needed. Feet slipping on the slick concrete, he struggled to push another two-ton console into position – all while trying to settle down his _completely_ freaked-out little stowaway. 

"I don't understand!" screamed Tuck. "That's really Smytus? _Here?_ Why would Smytus want to take over the Goop Zone? Can't he just _win_ a giant stuffed hippo like everyone else?"

"Oh, fer the love of …" – Drew rolled his eyes as he ripped a giant monitor from the ceiling, and tossed it on the barricade – "… Tuck, would you just _forget_ about the stupid Goop Zone already, and take off your backpack! _Hurry!_"

"Unless we're not _really_ at the Goop Zone … but then where could we be …" – Tuck's eyes went wide as dinner plates, and his cheeks drained of color until there was nothing left but gray. He suddenly recalled the words of Smytus' tirade. "Did Smytus say something about a secret asteroid base? A real live secret asteroid base in outer space with a doomsday weapon and laser guns and robot drones and a hangar bay and a giant mutant shark tank for tossing helpless prisoners into?"

Another console tossed on the pile. "Uh, pretty much everything up to the shark tank, yeah."

"AAAIIIIIIGHHHH!" Tuck screamed, running around in small circles. "What are we doing here? What am _I_ doing here? Don't you realize you're jeopardizing a minor?"

Drew pulled two chairs out of the floor, trying to work fast. "Oh, boy … look, I'll explain everything after we get the heck out of here. Now make yourself useful and get my teleporter – and it is _my teleporter_ – out of your backpack, and set the …"

A hideous noise hissed out from the direction of the sealed door. A foot-wide circle of metal was glowing white hot. Then a brilliant cutting beam burst through, spitting droplets of glowing steel onto the concrete, and slowly started to slice through the thick metal.

* * *

Smytus shouted at his underlings with the rage of a prehistoric volcano. Critical base equipment had taken damage from the ricocheting laser fire. Scorch-marks pitted the walls of the cavern, still hazy with roiling clouds of dust and smoke. "Move your shells!" he bellowed, as he wiped the last of the goo from his face. "Finish those repairs! I want that Force Field back up! I want all fighters scrambled! And I will not tolerate any delays! _You!_ Status report!" 

A laser-scorched roach-drone snapped a shaky salute. "Still working on the force field, sir – but damage to the cannon is minimal. We can fire again in a few minutes! As for the nanodroid, he and the tiny human have sealed themselves off in a substation. We're breaking through now …"

"I want him captured, understand? I want that underhanded no-good silver-green abomination caught and melted down for piston grease!" Smytus deployed a boom microphone from his chest, and shouted over the asteroid's PA system. "Attention all drones! Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the nanodroid HAS been approved!"

"… Commander! Something else!" The roach-drone pointed at an undamaged monitor. "Two Hornets on patrol have located the _Free Will_ hiding in this system!"

A thoughtful look came to Smytus' face. "The Underground's treacherous pirate vessel," he mumbled, tapping his chin with a clawed finger. "Drones! I'm ordering a change of target!" He strutted to the handrail to address the crowd. "The planet Earth isn't _going_ anywhere. Set targeting co-ordinates for the star cruiser _Free Will_. I shall eliminate Earth, XJ-9, and those treasonous Underground leaders, all in the same day! MUA HA HA HA HA HAAA!"

* * *

Tuck gripped Drew's leg like a baby koala. The cutting beam had sliced half-way around the door, when another horrible thought dawned on him. "Umm, hey Drew … I know that Smytus tends to _blabber_ a lot whenever we bump into him, but I distinctly remember him using the words …" – he yanked hard to bring the android boy down to his frantic eyes – "… _cruise missile attack_." 

"Yeah, in about three minutes." Drew punched numbers into his teleporter. "Anti-matter warhead. _Yeee-owtch._ There's not going to be enough of this lousy rock left to fill a pothole."

"But _I'm_ on this lousy rock!"

"Well, it's not like I intended to stick around to _watch_," smiled Drew. He heaved a sigh of relief, pointed the teleporter towards the wall, pushed the red button …

_Fzzzzt. Click. Vreeeeeee …_ The gizmo made a sound like a dying sparrow.

The optimism disappeared from Drew's face in a split second. He mashed the button again and got the same non-result …

"It … it's dead! The power cells are completely _dead_! How the heck is that even _possible_? It was fully charged this morning! _Geez_, to drain a subatomic power cell you'd … have … to …" – he paused, and his eyes slowly turned downward to glare at Tuck like two burning coals – "… make dozens, and dozens, and _dozens_ of hyperspace jumps. Possibly while carrying a _Goop rifle_."

"Ah-heh-heh … heh-heh …" – Tuck tugged nervously at his collar – "… _umm_, I think I have some double-A batteries in my flashlight. _Heh_ …"

An eruption of gunfire rang out from the archway, punching a flaming hole in the makeshift barricade. The first drone reinforcement charged through instantly, raised his plasma rifle, and started firing. Drew shoved Tuck under a desk, arced his body through the air in a graceful parabola – and sliced the drone's head off with a hastily grown nano-blade. The decapitated robot collapsed, sending its rifle skittering along the cold concrete floor. A second drone vaulted through the barricade, carrying a strange-looking white tank on its back. He pointed a strange weapon at Drew, fired – and a stream of liquid nitrogen splashed onto the blade-arm, instantly freezing it rock solid. Drew cringed in agony, and the drone prepared to fire at him again – then he reached over, _snapped off_ his arm at the elbow, and flung it at the drone-soldier like a boomerang! The frozen blade smacked the Cluster robot right between the eyes, and it dropped to the floor like a rag doll, spewing sparks from its face.

Tuck shook his head in astonishment, double-blinking. "… _Whoa._"

Then another drone clambered through the barricade, armed with another of the cryo-guns. Drew was out in the open, still growing his arm back – he was a sitting duck! Cold terror seized at Tuck's poor stomach – until he spotted the plasma rifle that the first drone had dropped. He clenched his tiny fists with resolve, and jumped out from under the desk. "Don't worry, Drew! _I'll_ save you!" He lunged for the rifle, wrapped his hands around the grip, raised the barrel towards the robot soldier …

And fired clear over his head. Tuck could barely lift the gun, let alone aim it. And he had no clue what the power settings on a Cluster rifle meant. Otherwise, he likely wouldn't have shot off a plasma bolt capable of leveling a brick wall. The plasma slammed into the ceiling, rocking the entire room with a bone-rattling explosion. A waterfall of dust and rubble came down on the drone's head, and he looked up … just in time to see a ten-foot-wide chunk of reinforced concrete hurtle down to crush him flat as a flapjack.

Drew stumbled through the dust and picked up Tuck, whose dazed eyes were still spinning like pinwheels. "Way to go, Bot Buster," he said with a sarcastic smirk …

As the cutting beam finished carving the hole out of the emergency door. One second later, fresh plasma fire imploded the barricade completely. They had to get out of there fast. Armageddon was on its way. Clutching Tuck to his chest, Drew crouched deep, and jumped through the smoking hole in the ceiling. There were two hundred furious Cluster soldier drones hot on their tail.

* * *

The Hornets' afterburners screeched white-hot as they closed the gap on the speedy cruise missile. Their own missiles weren't fast enough to catch it; but nothing could outrun a beam of light, and the drone pilots grew confident as they neared the maximum range of their laser cannons. The first Hornet pilot skillfully worked his thrusters, nudging the coal-black missile into the center of his crosshairs … 

Something big and fast and dark flashed by his wing. That confused the drone – there were no other ships on his sensors – then he remembered something, and reached to turn on his radar …

Too late to avoid the mile-wide asteroid rushing directly towards him. The Hornet fighter _evaporated_ on impact, carving out a deep crater filled with fiery shrapnel. The cruise missile curved _around_ the space rock, then dipped to avoid another, gracefully dancing into the thickening field of tumbling boulders. The second Hornet struggled valiantly to match the missile's trajectory, following it deeper and deeper into the asteroid belt. On a direct course for the Cluster base.

* * *

The boys scrambled through the hole and ran down a long, dimly lit tunnel, only to be confronted by yet another pair of hostile robot soldiers. As the drones unslung their plasma rifles, Drew lunged forward into a silvery blur. He flung his arms out to form clawed tentacles, each crossing over the other to grasp a drone by the elbow. The drones leveled their rifles at the trespassers and fired – half a second after the silver-green claws gave their elbows a hard tug, yanking them off balance. The rightmost drone spun to the left, the leftmost drone spun to the right – and they blew each other's heads to smithereens. 

Tuck stared at Drew, slack-jawed. "So where'd you learn to do _that_? Wonder Weenie?"

"_Gasp_ … _puff_ … not _now_, Tuck." He ran a hand through his silvery bangs, trying to organize his jumbled thoughts. "I'm trying to think up a way out of here!"

"You know, _Jenny_ would have just deployed her rocket boosters by now."

"Oh, that's right, I can't _grow_ rocket boosters," Drew snarled back. "Gee, it's a darn good thing I brought a _teleporter_ with me then, isn't it?"

"Hey, hey, chill! I'm just sayin' …"

"Wait a second …" – a light went on it Drew's eyes – "… I may not be able to _form_ rockets, but I know where we can _find_ some! I'm pretty sure the hangar's at the end of this …"

Then they heard the first wave of pursuing drones climb up through the hole. The boys turned and ran as if their hair was on fire. The pounding of mechanical boots echoed behind them. Drew glanced at the running countdown in his vision; two minutes, thirty seconds until kaboom time. The end of the tunnel grew closer, beckoning them with the hope of escape and the ever-growing whine of rocket engines. Drew and Tuck spilled out into a large room with a wide row of plate glass windows – an observation deck that looked out over the expansive spacecraft hangar.

The base's three remaining Hornets had taxied to the middle of the hangar, fully armed, engines running, waiting while the massive roof slowly slid open. They were being scrambled to shoot down the incoming cruise missile. They were _exactly_ what the boys needed to get away from the doomed asteroid.

Slight problem: the boys were five floors up. The hangar entrance was down on the _first_ level.

Drew watched the first Hornet pivot its engine nozzles. It rose off the floor, beginning its smooth ascent.

Shouts rang out behind them. Over one hundred drones were running down the tunnel, closing on them fast. Drew's head snapped left and right, looking for a stairwell, an elevator, anything. _Think think think think …_ Then he looked down at Tuck. He was still wearing those ridiculous Goop ammunition belts on his chest. With the plastic grenades, Tuck looked like a miniature 80's action hero.

"Those things filled with that crazy Goop stuff of yours?"

"Why, _yes_ they are," grinned Tuck, instantly cluing in. He handed two grenades to Drew, took a pair for himself, and they hurled them down the tunnel as far as they could. The grenades bounced twice, clattering to a stop just in front of the closest drones … then they exploded in a disgusting _splortch_ of synthetic green mucus. Stunned drones slipped and slid every which way, vaulting backwards to land on the concrete floor with a titanic crash. Metallic bodies stacked up to form a robotic traffic pileup. Tuck was bursting with sadistic delight. "Yeah, that'll teach you robot wusses to mess with the power of Goop! Yeah, how do you like me now? Huh? How do …"

His trash-talk was cut off as Drew clutched him under his arm like a football. Strangely, his head was flattening and morphing … into a thick metal plate the size of an anvil. Short, stubby spikes sprouted up on top of it.

Before Tuck could ask what he was doing, he broke into a flat-out sprint. Heading directly towards the plate glass window.

He lowered his spiked head like a charging rhino.

Tuck let out a panicked scream as the heavy glass exploded into a million sparkling shards. Drew plowed through the window, feet churning hard until there was nothing left but air beneath them. The boys sailed through the air, howling and lurching and falling and flailing their arms like windmills – until they landed with a hard _thud_, slamming into the canopy bubble of the hovering Hornet fighter craft.

* * *

"Tell those repair crews I want the engines back on-line, _now_!" Captain Polaris felt the stressful gurgling in his hydraulics again. The _Free Will_ was floating dead in space, just begging for trouble … 

The Underground robots balled their fists in anticipation, watching the main display with hawk-like vigilance. "Missile still on course," said Greaser. "Two minutes to fireworks, dudes."

Allison watched the missile track too, but her insides were churning up, like she'd replaced her fuel cells with a blender motor. She glanced to the empty receiving area on the bridge. He should have been here by now. She should call him. No, she shouldn't. It wouldn't do any good, and there's nothing she could do now, anyway. _C'mon, you big silver goofball, c'mon …_

"Uh oh," said Greaser. New graphics and symbols popped up on the screen. "Whoa, we're like, being totally _scanned_, dudes. These energy readings are straight out of bizarro world!"

"The Anywhere Cannon," Polaris said darkly. "They're getting ready to fire it again. At _us_."

* * *

Pieces of shattered canopy peeled away, revealing three stunned figures piled on top of each other in a space intended for only one. Tuck snapped bolt upright and vigorously patted himself down, making sure he was still in one intact piece. He'd been _sure_ he was about two seconds away from turning into a floor pizza. But instead he was sitting in a weird alien space fighter, surrounded by beeping and pinging and flashing – and cushioned by a nice, cushy, silver-green gel pillow. He must have jumped fifty feet through the air! "Let's do that _AGAIN!_" 

The silver-green pillow would've made a sarcastic remark if it hadn't been for the pilot-drone whose claws were wrapped around his neck. "_Glurkhhh!_" choked Drew, as he rammed an elbow into the drone's shoulder. "… Tuck, just _shut up_, and keep your head down …"

He should have heeded his own advice. A steel fist slammed into his cheek, knocking him off balance. His feet wrapped around the pilot's waist, using the stubby drone as an anchor. Unfortunately, this was all happening in a hovering spacecraft that pitched and bobbed and rolled like a rubber raft on the high seas. Tuck inadvertently leaned against the control stick, and the Hornet's nose pitched up like bucking bronco – catapulting Drew and the pilot-drone right out of the cockpit. They tumbled and somersaulted backwards along the fuselage – heading right towards the _fusion engines_. Arms lunged desperately for a handhold, and when the world stopped spinning, the sparring robots were clinging desperately to the left weapons pod, fifty feet above the hangar floor!

Drew wrapped one arm around the pod, tried to punch the pilot with the other … then the wings rolled drastically to the left, then back to the right, nearly launching him into the air again. _Wait a second_ … if _he_ was on the wing, and the _pilot_ was on the wing, then who was flying the …

Tuck smiled and waved excitedly from the pilot's seat. Drew's eyes nearly shot clear out of their sockets. "_TUCK!_ Oh, geez, whatever you do, don't touch …"

The rest of his sentence was drowned out by a barrage of laser fire, zinging past his nose and filling the wing-skin with smoking holes. A crowd of soldier-drones had amassed at the broken window of the observation deck, treated to the sight of their silver-green quarry, dangling from the Hornet's wing like an apple from a tree. Drew and the pilot twisted frantically to avoid the hail of lasers …

"_Yipes!_" Tuck yelped, dropping for cover as lasers screamed over his head. Now Drew was in real trouble! Adrenaline and excitement surged in his veins as never before in his young life. There _had_ to be something he could do to help! His eyes scanned the impossibly complex dials and gauges on the panel, looking for possibilities. "Well, if a lifetime of video games has taught me anything," he grinned, "it's that there's no problem in life you can't solve with massive firepower!" The steel control stick between his legs had a red trigger on its grip. He wrapped his hands around the trigger, and squeezed …

And all _heck_ broke loose. Twin fountains of flame blasted out of the weapons pods with a roar as if the world was being ripped in half. Horrifically spectacular plumes of gunfire sprayed into the observation deck, laying waste to dozens of drones and turning Level Five into a cloud of gravel. Windows exploded outward into a blizzard of crystalline needles. Wailing sirens blared through the cavern, drowned out by explosions. Panicked laser shots rang out from the deck and hangar floor. Hysterical worker drones scrambled to avoid the shower of fiery debris. The Hornet's chassis shuddered with gut-churning vibration, forcing Tuck to lock his hands on the trigger while he bounced crazily in the seat, barely able to see over the control panel. "_Thhhiiiissss_ … _iiissss_ … _ssssoooo_ … _cooooooolll!_"

It was _far_ less cool for the robots who were all of twelve inches away from the screaming cannons; Drew could feel his skin scorching from being so close. "TUCK! STOP FIR … _sheesh_, will you GET LOST, buddy?" – he gave the annoying pilot-drone a powerful kick, knocking him off the pod – and directly _in front_ of the roaring laser cannon. The pilot's demise was as dramatic as it was brief. Drew flipped up and lay dazed for a second, hanging onto the edge of the Hornet's wing …

And saw Hornets number two and three spool up their engines, and float into the air on columns of superheated exhaust. Their wings brimmed with eager weapons.

Tuck saw them too. A fresh surge of adrenaline flowed into his body, kicking in yet _more_ instincts born from hours on the living room couch. He yanked the control stick, lurching the laser-scorched Hornet into a sickening 180-degree turn. The control stick had red buttons on top of it. Bright, _shiny_ buttons.

Drew shrieked like a schoolgirl. "TUCK! DON'T! It's too confined in here! DON'T … ah, crud."

All eight of the Hornet's missiles belched out of the weapons pods in a burst of fire and gray smoke. Five of them slammed into Hornet 2. The spacecraft disintegrated instantly into a billowing cloud of flame and plasma; there one millisecond, gone the next. Two of the other missiles slammed into the far wall, but one clipped Hornet 3's tail, blasting it to pieces just as its doomed pilot fired _his_ weapons. Out of control, Hornet 3 lurched up vertically, as if standing on its tail … and unloaded two missiles into the sliding hangar-roof mechanism. Concussive blasts rang out from the high ceiling, followed by still more explosions as the fiery remains of Hornets 2 and 3 plummeted to the floor.

But Tuck and Drew barely noticed any of this. So many missiles, exploding at near point-blank range, formed a vicious shock wave that slapped the hijacked Hornet like an invisible giant's hand. The wounded Cluster spacecraft _slid backwards_ through the air, crashing forcefully into the smoking remains of the observation deck … and _got stuck._

* * *

The fighter banked sharply around a dumbbell-shaped asteroid, matching every jinking maneuver of the cruise missile it chased. The pilot-drone fired another shot and missed by mere inches; he was getting so close, so close. The stealth missile pitched down, swerved around another space rock, twisted back the other way … and then leveled off, flying towards a gap between two giant asteroids. The drone pushed his fighter's engines to the red line, rapidly closing the distance … 

But the asteroids were moving _towards_ each other. The missile sped through the closing gap, and streaked out the other side. The Cluster fighter tried to follow …

_Crunch._

The cruise missile flew onward, its computer brain concerned with nothing more than its radar, its guidance software, and its mission timer. _One minute to detonation and counting_.

* * *

"Force field is _still_ down, Commander!" reported the technician. "And there seems to be some kind of problem in the hangar bay! Hostile missile still inbound!" 

"Well, lock our missiles on it and prepare to _fire_ then, idiot!" Smytus was now visibly nervous himself. Threat alarms screamed as worker drones raced to finish repairs on the Anywhere Cannon. The Cannon's generators awoke with a deep, reverberating _vrrmmmm_. The coils on the giant portal hummed to life. The PA system announced that the cannon would be ready to fire in forty seconds. In forty seconds, the _Free Will_, and the Cluster Underground, would be a thing of the past.

Smtyus grinned, rubbing his claws together with malicious glee. "Now to deal with this bothersome, futile Underground attack! Defensive missile batteries, FIRE!"

The technician-drone hammered the missile button –

And nothing happened. The drone punched it again.

With a disgusting _splortch_, a bubble of green Goop oozed out from under the edges of the button. Goop _did_ have a nasty habit of getting into everything. The defense console crackled with short circuits, and the technician drone looked up at Smytus, horrified.

Commander Smytus, the great warrior, the living legend of the Cluster Empire, bravely pressed a little yellow button on his left arm. His personal hover-scooter _whooshed_ up from the floor to a floating stop just a few feet away. He sprang over the platform railing, grabbing his scooter's handlebars as if clinging onto a life preserver. "Uhhh, drone, I am _so confident_ that you're going to get this little problem taken care of, that I'm putting you in charge until I get back from this … er … _thing_, I just remember I have to go to. Somewhere. Top Secret. _Bye!_" A beam flashed out from the scooter, carving a hyperspace vortex out of the air. As soon as the wormhole was open, Smytus zipped inside like a scalded dog.

The technician clasped his claws to his chest. "A promotion! Wow! Mom's gonna be so proud!"

* * *

Allison fought to keep a stoic expression as she stared helplessly at the yellow dot on the flight path display. A timer counted down the seconds remaining in Drew's life. Thirty-one. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Greaser and the others empathized with her growing sense of foreboding – yet they knew their very lives now depended on that missile reaching its target as soon as possible – 

A flickering, multicolored light began to filter in through the bridge's wraparound windows. Polaris rushed forward, and stared out into space with a sense of dread …

A giant hyperspace vortex swirled into existence. Like a demon's eye. Staring right at them.

* * *

The wounded fighter shuddered underneath the collapsed ceiling beams, thrashing about like a wild animal caught in a net, but was still lodged firmly in the smoking remains of the Level Five observation deck. Tuck jerked the control stick back and forth, to no avail. He looked out the back of the cockpit – and a cold lump formed in his belly. There was movement in the rubble. Some of the Cluster soldiers had survived his laser onslaught, and were looking to deliver some payback. And the remainder of the drone pursuers were bursting out of the corridor, eager to join the fray. Tuck reached down for his Goop rifle – and saw that the tank was empty. "_Ulp._ O-o-okay … s-so you wanna go hand-to-hand, do you?" 

Then he was pushed back down by a smoldering, silver-green arm. Drew had _finally_ made it back to the cockpit. He grabbed the Hornet's throttle, twisted the handle, rammed it forward …

And activated the fighter's afterburners. Howling torrents of white-hot fusion screamed out of the engine nozzles, transforming the observation deck into a roiling lake of fire. Metallic bodies ignited as if they were made of straw. Flaming drones ran in circles, blazing like torches, howling as their circuit boards melted down into silicon slag. And the teeth-rattling kick from the afterburners wrenched the Hornet free of the wreckage, and shoved it back into mid-air as the deck transformed into an inferno.

A fuel tank on the far side of the hangar erupted with a deafening blast. Two more explosions rocked the artificial roof, destroying its sliding door mechanism. Flaming gears and metalwork plummeted towards the floor. Drew twisted the controls, just _barely_ pivoting the fighter out of the way of the falling wreckage. Bedlam howled all around him; no part of the hangar was left untouched by explosions and raging fire.

"_Sheesh_, I don't know who I should be more afraid of!" he shouted at Tuck. "The Cluster, or YOU!"

"Never mind that!" Tuck shouted back, pulling his hair. "Just get us _out_ of here!"

Drew spun their limping Hornet around in a wobbly circle, trying to figure out how to do just that. The hangar was filled with fire and black smoke. Concrete support beams and thick slabs of rock crashed down from the walls. The roof was jammed in a half-open position, blocked by flaming metal beams jutting at bizarre angles, like broken bones. He didn't have any missiles left to blast the blockage away. And even if he could get through the roof, he doubted that he'd be able to outrun the missile blast. The Hornet's left engine was on fire, and the flames were spreading to the tail. Half of the right wing was missing; the other half was pitted with laser blasts. His getaway ship felt as if it would fall to pieces in a strong breeze, let alone a nuclear shock front.

The Hornet wheezed and shuddered, hovering closer to the floor.

Its nose rotated towards the large, elliptical tunnel entrance.

"Um … Drew?" squeaked Tuck. "Aren't you kind of going … the wrong way?"

Instead of answering, Drew slammed the engines to full throttle, and braced himself.

* * *

The cruise missile flew low over the cratered surface of a cigar-shaped asteroid, slaloming between a pair of small hills, then curved up and away, streaking into a clearer patch of space. 

The missile's seeker head spotted a large, rocky sphere. Right where it was supposed to be.

It made one last course correction.

It armed its warhead.

_Time to impact, fifteen seconds … fourteen … thirteen …_

* * *

CONCLUDED in Chapter Eight

* * *


	8. Keeping Secrets

A/N – And so we come to an end, after just eight chapters, but if you check the word count, you'll see it wound up being a fairly long story. Once again, I want to say a billion thank-yous to all my readers, and everyone who took the time to write a review. For those of you who have requested reviews of your own stories, I haven't forgotten – I will, eventually, get around to it! I'm also going to try and update my FF profile. Now, where did we leave Drew and Tuck? Oh, that's right – fifteen seconds away from white-hot anti-matter death, in a busted-up space fighter that was on fire! Now THAT'S a cliffhanger! HA! All right, lights, camera, ACTION!

* * *

The Anywhere Cannon

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eight – Keeping Secrets

* * *

Splashes of hungry flame rimmed the tunnel entrance that rushed headlong to swallow them whole. Tuck shrieked and dug his hands into the cockpit seat, with a grip that could have snapped a steel girder in half. "DREW! Outer space is THAT way! We're not gonna FIT! AAAAAAHHH!" He tried in vain to shut his eyes, but abject terror had paralyzed every muscle in his quaking little body. "I'm gonna _die_! In a _spaceship crash!_ I always knew it was gonna be a spaceship crash …"

The burning Hornet blasted into the tunnel like a railroad car loaded with fireworks. The wings sheared off like tissue paper, filling the thick smoky air with the skin-crawling screech of ripping metal. Its gyros failed, and the dying fighter belly-flopped onto the tunnel floor with a neck-snapping jolt. Barely under control, the fuselage ricocheted off the rocky walls like a rocket-powered bobsled, throwing a choking trail of fire and dust and metal shreds. The boys winced from the unpleasant _thuds_ of Cluster roach-drones being crushed flat underneath them. The twin black-and-yellow rudders broke off. A hard bump ripped the nose cone away. The cockpit screamed with warning sirens as the spacecraft deteriorated into an unguided missile; Drew gulped hard, hoping that his 'missile' could outrun the Underground's.

The end of the tunnel raced towards them. Drew stood up in the seat, grabbed Tuck by the arms, and got ready to jump. "Last stop! Everybody off!"

The battered fuselage hurtled into the main chamber as a howling fireball. The boys leapt clear just before the cockpit disintegrated, and rolled to safety as the Hornet's fiery remains rocketed onward … and slammed broadside into the monstrous barrel of the Anywhere Cannon itself. Drone workers flew through the air like tennis balls as a mammoth explosion ripped out of the cannon's side, filling the chamber with a fountain of orange fire and coal-black smoke.

By now, Tuck was _fairly_ sure that Drew had gone stark raving nuts. When he tossed him over his shoulder and actually ran _towards_ the burning death ray, he was _completely_ sure.

And then they jumped _into_ the barrel of the Cannon.

Tuck's all-too-brief life flashed before his eyes as Drew took a few steps into the smooth, humming gun barrel. An ominous glow flickered in the darkness, growing stronger and closer. Tuck whimpered, and slapped his hands over his eyes. "AAAAAAHHH! Doomsday cannon! I always knew it was gonna be a Doomsday cannon …"

Then he spun around, and floating in front of the cannon mouth was … a giant vortex, shimmering with psychedelic swirls of riotous, maddening color. The enormous hyperspace portal that served as the aiming tool for the Anywhere Cannon.

"Cross your fingers, kiddo," Drew shouted, charging into a sprint.

He wrapped his silvery arms around Tuck, ran the last few paces to the lip of the cannon's mouth, and vaulted into the air like an Olympic long jumper. Only then did he dare glance down at the countdown timer in the corner of his computerized vision. He saw nothing but zeroes. A cold terror formed in his syrupy innards as he sailed towards the vortex, and the kaleidoscopic rainbow of colors dissolved into a featureless, searing white.

* * *

A new star blazed to life amongst the asteroids.

The sensors onboard the _CSS Free Will_ went berserk. One moment, the brown rocky asteroid was barely visible against the inky backdrop of space. The next, it radiated out of the bridge's viewscreens with the blinding brilliance of a miniature supernova. Greaser deployed a pair of sunglasses over his eyes and reduced the screen's magnification by an order of three. The eerily silent anti-matter explosion was as spectacular as it was terrifying. The Underground robots stared in awe, watching a sphere of scalding light balloon outward from the detonation. Sensors confirmed the obvious: the Anywhere Cannon and its secret base had been completely annihilated, reduced to an expanding cloud of free-floating subatomic particles. The threat of Smytus' ultimate weapon was no more. Earth had been saved, the galaxy had been saved, and the lives of the Underground robots _themselves_ had been saved! Shouts of triumph and relief rose up from the bridge, and a couple of robots cracked open a can of victory oil …

And while her comrades cheered, Allison stared anxiously at the empty platform at the back of the bridge, convinced that a hyperspace portal was going to open up – _now_. _Annnnnny_ second now. Any second now, a flash of light would … okay, now. … Now. … _Now._

But there was no flash of light.

She staggered to the bridge's wraparound windows, and stared out at the remnants of the massive vortex, watching it sputter away into nothingness. The brightness of the distant light cast ghostly shadows on her face, highlighting the shocked expression in her eyes.

"_No_," she croaked, fighting to keep her weak voice from cracking. The celebration waned as the robots suddenly noticed their leader's melancholy, and realized the price of their victory …

"_Whooooaaa!_" An unexpected alarm nearly knocked Greaser out of his chair. The tension built again, as the youthful robot fiddled with his sensor readings. "Like, this _totally_ doesn't make any sense, dudes! There's a little green dot-thingy on the radar scope. Getting _really_ close. Came outta nowhere! I think the vortex kind of _horked_ something up before it faded out!"

"Booby trap!" Polaris shouted. "Its a plasma mine! Or a nuke! Or …"

Everyone jumped when the loud _CLANG_ rang through the hull.

Strangely, they could hear something like the scratching of _claws_ on the outside of the ship. Feet skittered overhead, made their way down the wall – and seconds later, everyone was stunned to hear the sound of _knocking_. Shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits. Coming from the airlock hatch.

Unsure of what to expect, two rifle-carrying robots rushed to the airlock and keyed in the sequence to open the door. With a _hiss_ of pressurized air, the hatch swung inward, and onto the bridge stumbled … a scorched, silver-green sphere, wobbling on four double-jointed legs like a newborn giraffe. A long, flexing tubule stretched up, morphing and stretching into a punch-drunk face …

"Permission … to come aboard … Cap'n," Drew babbled - before collapsing into an exhausted heap.

A joyous crowd of robots rushed to welcome their shape-shifting saboteur back to safety, but it was Allison who made it to Drew's side first. "Drew! Drew, are you all right?" she shouted, wiping blackened soot off his face. She leaned down and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Darn it … say something, Drew!"

Tired eyes creaked open. "I want a raise."

She broke into a huge smile, and waved a mock fist under his chin. "_You rotten …_ You just about scared the fuel pump out of me, you …"

Then to everyone's surprise, there came the sound of yet _more_ knocking. But it was coming … from _inside Drew_. Or more precisely, from his grotesquely swollen midsection. He slowly propped himself up on his elbows, and patted his round belly. "All right, all right … hold your horses."

"_Whoa_," gasped Greaser, "I didn't even know he was expecting."

With a rippling _schwerrrp_, his nanobot body cracked open like a silver egg … and out tumbled an over-stimulated, black-haired little boy, gasping to fill his lungs with sweet, sweet oxygen. "I'm alive? I'M ALIVE! Great Caesar's Ghost, I'M ALIVE! WOO HOOO!" Confused robots stared in slack-jawed bewilderment, not quite sure what to make of Tuck as he fell to the floor and started to run around in circles of hysterical glee. "I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive …"

"What … what in Cog's name is _that_?" sneered Polaris. "Does it bite?"

Tuck sprang to his feet in alarm. "Wha … not MORE Cluster robots? Awww, _c'mon_! Geez, what's a guy gotta do to get a break in this galaxy?" He spun around in a panic, then … raised a puzzled finger to his chin. "Wait a second – you guys don't _look_ like Cluster robots. Usually, they've got that whole 'killer insect' thing going. In fact, haven't I seen you somewhere before? Wait a minute – yeah!" He pointed an excited finger at Allison. "You're _Sugar Droid_!"

She blushed a horrified shade of deep purple, as Drew slapped his forehead in agony. "Everyone, say hello to Tuck. No need to worry, he's … _umm_, he's … _ehhh_, I was gonna say 'harmless', but on second thought, that's _not_ the word to use …"

Captain Polaris scowled with annoyance. "Who _is_ this? An _outsider_? What were you _thinking_, you silver mush-brain? Bringing an outsider along with you on a covert mission? Don't tell me he knows about the Cluster Underground!"

Tuck's eyes lit up like traffic lights. "Wow, there's a _Cluster Underground?_"

Allison gave the big robot a smack on the shoulder. "Well, he knows _now_, genius!" Polaris cringed, and shrank away.

"Wait a minute … Cluster Underground? Covert mission?" An infectious smile grew on Tuck's excited little face as his brain put two and two together. He pointed a knowing finger at Drew, grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary. "Omigosh … _that's_ why you were sneaking around on that asteroid! And _that's_ why you snuck up to the roof to make that phone call – and why you kept trying to ditch on your Mom and me! You were on a _secret mission_ – for the Cluster Underground! Oh, _wow_! You're like a secret agent or something! Fighting the Cluster! Ooooh, I bet this wasn't your first time either, right? This explains why you're never at Mezmer's on Turtle Racing Night!"

Allison and Greaser stared at Tuck, dumbstruck by the little fellow's rapid-fire prattle. Drew just rolled his eyes. "Tuck, slow down and breathe, or your head'll explode."

"Wait a minute – that means I was on a secret mission, too! I was on a real life secret mission doing battle against Smytus and his band of blood-thirsty Cluster robots! Oh, wow, you guys should have _seen_ it! There were lasers blasting to the left of us! _Pchew, pchew, pchew!_ And lasers blasting to the right of us! _Kzzzow, kzzzow, kzzzow!"_ Tuck flung his arms in wild manic gestures, growing more animated with every passing second. "… then I blew a hole in the roof! And we blew up a space fighter … no, we blew up … wait … I _lost count_ of how many space fighters we blew up! And there were _huge_ fires and _giant_ explosions and big chunks of rock falling on us and we smashed into that big gi-normous cannon … and I gooped dumb ol' Smytus right between the eyes! Twice! Me! Tucker Carbunkle, King of the Bot Busters … Oh wow … _I just helped save the universe!_"

Allison raised a bemused eyebrow towards Drew, who just huffed in response. "That's a rather generous interpretation of the word _helped_," he groaned, plucking a burnt piece of hair from his head.

"I can't believe it! I was on a real life secret mission to battle the Cluster!" Tuck rubbed his little hands together with barely contained excitement. "_Ohhhh_, wait till I tell Brad about this! He thinks he's such hot stuff – wait till he finds out that his little brother just saved his butt! And the butts of every single person on the planet Earth! Wow, that's a lot of butts."

"Uh-oh," gulped Drew. "Tuck, I don't think telling Brad is such a good idea …"

"Are you kidding? Of course it is! _Haaaa_, let's see what Mister Frogzilla-Killa has to say when everyone finds out his little brother defeated Smytus!" Tuck's face shone like a theater spotlight as he imagined the adoring reception awaiting him back home. "I'm going to be in the newspapers! I'm going to be on TV! _Yessss!_ Finally! No more 'wait until you're older, short stuff!'. No more 'oh, that's just Brad's little brother!' I'm finally going to be somebody important! Once everybody finds out what happened here today, I'm gonna be …"

"TUCK! _Nobody_ is going to find out!"

"Wha … huh?" Confusion washed the daydreams out of his eyes. "But …"

Drew folded his arms, and gave him a stern look. "You said it yourself – _secret mission_. See, they're called 'secret missions' for a reason, Tuck. They're not called 'widely publicized missions'. Understand? We can never tell _anyone_."

It was as if all the air had rushed out of his little lungs at once. "B-b-but … but I was finally gonna be _famous_, Drew. I was gonna be famous, just like Jenny! Look … look, if we tell everyone that we whomped on the Cluster, then you'll be famous, too!"

"There's more important things in the universe than being _famous_," Drew sighed, shaking his head. He knelt down to look into Tuck's saddened face, and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Tuck, you and I, and Jenny and Brad … we go to school every day, have fun in the park, do pretty much anything we want … and we never have to worry about being hauled off to jail because of something we said. Or having our minds reprogrammed, because we don't think the right way. We never have to worry that the secret police will burst through the door at dinnertime, and take our families away. _That's_ more important than being famous."

Allison knelt down too, and raised a slender hand to lift Tuck's drooping chin. "That's what the Underground fights for, Tuck. Not fame – _freedom_. We fight so all robots can live as free as you do, back on Earth. We spread the truth about Vexus, we fight against her tyranny, and do what we can to stop her armies from taking over the galaxy. And even though the robots in the Underground are very brave, there are so _few_ of us, and so many, _many_ roach-drones. We could never hope to overthrow Vexus by sheer force. That's why Drew … _helps out_, now and then, in _special_ ways. It's _very_ dangerous, and it's _very_ important to keep it secret, at least as much as we possibly can." She smiled warmly, and looked right into his downcast eyes. "For us, keeping secrets is a matter of life and death. Isn't _that_ more important that being famous?"

A pouting lip jutted out. "… I _guess_," he grunted, shoving his hands into his pockets. "You never even told _Jenny_ about any of this?"

Drew winced. "I wanted to at first, but … when we thought about it, we decided that it was too risky. Jenny fights the Cluster all the time. And the Cluster is always trying to capture her."

"Remember when Smytus actually _did_ capture her?" asked Allison. Tuck nodded, remembering it well; it had happened right in front of him. "If we'd told Jenny everything about the Underground, Smytus would have learned all of our secrets when he assimilated her mind. The location of our secret headquarters, all our codes, all our members' names – the Underground would have been totally wiped out. And I'd probably be rusting in the palace dungeon by now. Or something _worse_."

Tuck kicked his feet, effectively guilted into compliance. "Aw, _maaaaan_. The coolest thing that ever happens to me, and I can't tell anyone." He looked up at Drew, sulking. "And here all this time, I thought you were just a big robot dork in a giant Wonder Weenie hat."

Drew chuckled. "Look, Jenny's a super-hero. That's what she does best. She was made to fly through the air, save helpless people, bench-press suspension bridges, beat up giant monsters, blast aliens out of the sky … she was _made_ to be famous. I'm _not_. Look at me – I'm made to sneak around in the shadows, blend in to the background … I'm made to be _invisible_. That's what _I_ do best, Tuck." He shrugged his shoulders. "And _invisible_ is kind of the opposite of _famous_."

He folded his little arms with a melodramatic huff. "You know, this really bites. I get shot at and blown up to help save the world, and I don't even get anything to _show_ for it?"

"Well, that depends," grinned the shape-shifter, rubbing his chin in thought. "Whether or not you're willing to accept a consolation prize from a big robot dork like me."

* * *

The big glass doors flung open, and Tuck bolted inside, sprinting like a greyhound out of a starting gate. "Made it with three minutes to spare! YES! WOO HOO! Oh boy, this is gonna be so awesome!"

Drew and Allison followed a safe distance behind him, barely avoiding a sugar-fueled stampede of screaming kids in party hats. Electronic whoops and whistles blared at deafening volume; strobe lights flashed nonstop in half a dozen colors; spitballs, basketballs, tennis balls and gumballs flew past their heads from every direction. It looked as if someone had crossed an indoor carnival with a junior biker convention, with a result that teetered on the brink of outright anarchy. Allison tiptoed across a stained carpet, carefully weaving through a minefield of cheese pizza droppings. "Are you sure," she asked, shouting to be heard over a loud buzzer, "that this _isn't_ a military training camp?"

"Nah, I don't think Skyway Patrol could handle these brats," he groaned, as they walked under a colorful banner which read _Welcome to the Goopiest Place on Earth!_

It had only taken a minute for Captain Polaris' crew to restore the hyperspace engines, and he'd been very eager to get as far away from the Gearshift Nebula as he possibly could. And since Cluster Prime was probably on the lookout for a rogue star cruiser right now, and since Drew was temporarily sans teleporter, Earth seemed as good a destination as any for the _CSS Free Will_ to rest for a bit. One hyperspace-jump later, the _Free Will_ – under full stealth countermeasures – had slipped into orbit high above the western United States. And then it had beamed a trio of passengers down to the outskirts of the idyllic little city of Tremorton, materializing them just outside of a large entertainment complex – known by the locals as The Goop Zone.

Allison gingerly tapped the side of a giant robot squirrel, and decided not to even _try_ to make sense of why it was there. "Sooooo … you're not worried that he'll blab to everyone?" she asked Drew.

"He can be a little hellion sometimes, but he's a pretty decent kid. He _did_ promise that he wouldn't blab." Drew groaned heavily, and his shoulders seemed to sink down to waist level. "_After_ I promised he could use me as a shape-shifting Goop Rifle."

She fought back a giggle. "Yet another noble sacrifice for the cause of robot freedom! _Snxxx._ Cluster poets will write about this someday."

"Gee, that makes it _all_ worthwhile," he grumbled.

Tuck heard none of the robot teens' banter; he was too busy weaving a path through a forest of legs, searching for the tournament registration table. He was still riding a huge adrenaline rush, not even sure if his feet were touching the floor. After all, he was a seven-year-old boy, who'd just battled an army of evil Cluster drones, _and_ just taken a ride in a rebel space cruiser, _and_ was about to compete in a super-cool tournament – did it _get_ any better than this? Well, yes it did, if you could work in ninjas somehow. But it had still been a pretty awesome adventure! Okay, it stunk that he could never tell anybody about it. That didn't mean he couldn't still be famous! It would just have to be for something else – like, winning the tournament, which was what he'd been planning to do in the first place! And now he could use his newly-acquired robot fighting experience! Laughing uncontrollably, Tuck rolled into a somersault, already fighting robots in his imagination. "Oh, there's a kid who lives a life of danger … to all his dorky friends, he stays a stranger … Hoo, ha, hiii-yaaah! Secret A-gent Tuck, Secret A-gent Tuck …"

If Tuck had been paying attention instead of providing his own theme music, he would have avoided the tall leg he crashed into with a loud _clang_.

"Oww!" he yelped, rubbing his nose. Then it dawned on him that legs don't usually go _clang_.

He slowly looked up … and the ear-to-ear grin on his face evaporated.

A six-and-a-half foot robot girl glared down at him with a cool, hard expression.

Jenny could be _very_ intimidating when she wanted to be.

She loomed over the little fellow like a redwood tree, with her arms folded across her chest, cutting him off from the entry door to the new Bot Buster expansion. Something ominous in her robotic eyes made Tuck feel instantly uncomfortable. And there were still a few streaks of greasy popcorn butter staining her aqua-blue pigtails. "I thought I might find you here," she said harshly.

"Heh-heh … heh-heh … Jenny!" stammered Tuck, trying badly to sound innocent. "Uhh … gee, what are you doing here at the Goop Zone?"

"Oh, I just thought we might have a little talk," she scowled. "About how I've been banned from the movie theater for a _month_."

Then to Tuck's distress, another tall figure stepped forward to confront him – his big brother! Brad looked like a mess, his rumpled clothing covered in salad greens and crème brulée. "And I thought we might have a little talk about how I'm washing dishes at _Le Bistro Swankée Foo Foo _for the next six weeks to pay for damages!"

And suddenly Sheldon was standing there too – with a black eye, a torn blue science officer tunic, and one ripped rubber ear dangling from the side of his head! "And I thought we could talk about the _riot_ you started at the Star Dreck Convention! I got hit in the back of the head with a rubber phaser! Those things _hurt_, y'know!"

The blood drained from Tuck's cheeks. "Wait! Guys! Y-you don't understand!"

"I understand that you've been making yourself a major _pest_ all day," sneered Jenny.

"I'm gonna give you such a spinning wedgie," snarled Brad, "it'll make your voice too high to be heard by anybody but dogs!"

"_Yikes!_" squealed Tuck, clutching his pants defensively. The three teenagers had him totally surrounded. They were seriously ticked off, and there was _no_ hope of escape. "G-g-guys, p-please, before you do anything to me … I just wanna say one thing!"

Jenny, Brad and Sheldon closed in around him. Jenny huffed, jutting her nose into the air. "Tuck, there's nothing you can say that will make me …"

"I'm _sorry_," he squeaked, clasping his hands in a plea for mercy. "_Really_ sorry."

The teenagers were caught by surprise by the sincerity in his quivering eyes. Even Brad, who could smell a little brother con job a mile away, felt those little black eyes tugging at his heartstrings. Tuck dropped his head in shame, and glanced up at Jenny again. "I'm sorry for causing so much trouble, everyone. I just wanted to win the Goop Zone tournament and be famous … famous just like you guys. Gee whiz, Jenny, you're practically on the front page of the paper every day. And Brad, everyone talks about how you defeated that giant mutant frog. And heck, even Sheldon is famous for hanging out with the Silver Shell all the time! I guess … I guess I was kinda jealous of you guys. I'm sorry."

Jenny gulped hard, and felt her anger start to slip away. She glanced over at Brad, who was tugging uneasily at his shirt collar. And Sheldon was wiping a tear away from his cheek. "BAW-AWW, the poor little guy! He just wanted some attention! _Baww-haww-hawww!_ Let me give him a hug!"

She shuffled awkwardly, then with a heavy sigh, reached down and tussled Tuck's thick black hair. "Apology accepted, squirt," she smiled. "I … I guess it wouldn't hurt me to spend a little time with one of my friends."

Tuck beamed with joy. "Sweet! You guys can hang out and watch me and Drew do a little Bot Busting!" He gestured over his shoulder, and the threesome just now noticed the other two teenage robots, jogging across the Goop Zone lobby to catch up.

"Huh? Drew? Oh right, I almost forgot!" Brad gave his silver-green friend a casual wave. "So, how'd the afternoon go? Hope the little guy wasn't too much trouble."

By some Herculean effort, Drew held back what he _really_ wanted to say. "T-T-Tuck? _Naaah_, no trouble at all. Hardly knew he was there. Heh, heh-heh. _Heh_."

Jenny did a double-take, even more surprised by who she saw standing next to Drew. "Allison? Wow, what are _you_ doing here? I mean, not that I'm not happy to see you, it's just that I thought …"

"Hmm? Wha … oh, _right_! Uhh …" – Allison nervously rubbed her left arm-housing – "… things were kind of slow on Cluster Prime, and I got a chance to come to Earth for a little visit. Just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Real sudden. _Ummm_, you know how it is."

"Yeah, she just dropped by like _that_," added Tuck, with a snap of his fingers. He sent a little smile Allison's way; she smiled back, giving him a wink in response.

"Well, I'll tell you what, shrimp boat," said Brad, theatrically straightening out the cuffs of his wrinkled shirt. "Because you're my little brother – and just to show there's no hard feelings – I'll hang around for this stupid tournament, to give you a little moral support, okay? I mean, after all the fuss you've been making about this Bot Buster thing, I figure I might as well see what it's like for myself. So – where is this fancy new game room supposed to be?"

"Right behind you!" Tuck answered, as he bounced past Brad over to the large green door. A glowing yellow logo shone overhead, framed by a pair of art-deco robots, snarling menacingly. "Are you brave enough to blast the robot invaders to smithereens, grunt?" asked a life-sized cut-out of a tough Space Marine. "You bet I am!" grinned Tuck, as he bounced up and down like a Jack Russell terrier. Finally, after all the headaches, after all the swindling, after all the blackmail, and after a little side trip halfway across the galaxy – it was time to get down to some serious robot-Goopin' goodness!

Tuck reached up, pushed the handle – but it didn't move. The door wouldn't budge.

He pushed the handle a few more times, then spotted a pimple-faced teenager with a uniform and a pushbroom. "Hey, you! Come over here! I think something's wrong with this door."

The teenager wiped his hands. "There's nothing wrong with it. It's locked."

"Huh? Locked?"

"Yeah, the construction guys are doing some last-minute painting in there," he croaked, emptying his dustpan in a garbage bin.

Despair gripped at Tuck's little heart. "Wha … but … how can they be working in there now? What about the big Bot Buster tournament? It starts in less than a minute!"

The floor sweeper rolled his eyes. "Do you have a copy of the official entry form?"

Tuck reached into his pocket, and yanked out a crumpled piece of paper. "What kind of question is that, Skippy? Of course I do! I've only been looking forward to this all _week_! Look, right here at the top of the form! It clearly says, 'Come one, come all to the Ultimate Goop Zone Shoot-Out! Celebrate the Grand Opening of the new Bot Buster Arena, at the Goop Zone, on Saturday the …"

Suddenly Tuck's throat flashed dry, and his eyes shrunk to the size of dust mites.

"_Oh_," he squeaked.

The teenagers exchanged confused glances. Tuck began to sweat, then started to chuckle nervously.

"Heh … heh-heh … it's not _this_ Saturday. It's _next_ Saturday. Heh-heh."

Sheldon balled his hands into tight fists. A vein on Brad's neck started to throb. Jenny grit her teeth, and her eyelid servo began to twitch randomly.

Tuck took a cautious step away from the door. "H-h-how about that? I got the … got the dates mixed up. Silly me! Wow. P-p-pretty funny, huh, guys?"

Without saying a word, Jenny's arm ratcheted out and grabbed two fully armed Goop rifles from a nearby counter. She handed one to Sheldon, and gave the other to Brad. As the boys pumped up the pressure on their rifles, Jenny's right arm underwent a mechanical transformation, turning into a six-barrel Gatling Gun with a huge reservoir of Goop mounted on top.

Tuck's knees began to shake. "Guys? C'mon, someday we'll look back on this and laugh …"

Jenny double-pumped her converted arm, and glanced at the boys. "Get 'im."

"WAAAAAIIIIIGGGGHHHH!"

Poor Tuck bolted like a panicked jackrabbit, scrambling across the lobby for all he was worth, with three irate gun-toting teenagers hot on his trail. Huge globs of Goop pelted him from head to toe in a near-continuous stream, almost as if he was being assaulted with a fire hose. He dove under a table for cover, only to watch Jenny touch down with her pigtail-jets, and easily lift the table away. He tried to make a break for the washrooms, but Brad got there ahead of him, and opened fire with another gooey barrage of snotlike goo. He sprinted for the front doors, but Sheldon had cut him off – and now had _four_ Goop rifles bolted together to form a Goop super-weapon. Other kids hollered with excitement and got into the action, starting up their own Goop fights – and suddenly Tuck found himself in the middle of massive crossfire, trapped in a veritable tornado of Goop. The little fellow looked like a drowned rat, and he was desperately searching for someplace to hide. Everyone in the building seemed to be shooting at him.

Except for Drew. He was content to stand off to the side, and enjoy a the show. "Gotta love karma," he chuckled softly. Then he noticed Allison giving him a nasty look. "_What?_" he protested.

"I sort of feel sorry for the little guy," she said, leaning against the front counter. "Like he said, he helped save the galaxy … and he's not getting much of a reward, is he?"

Drew folded his arms with a playful _huff_, and leaned next to her. "Sure, you're worried about _Tuck_. Y'know, I kinda sorta helped save the galaxy too." His puppy-dog eyes glanced at her through his silvery bangs, with a big pouting lip sticking out. "An' I never got any reward."

"Oh, so you want a reward now, too?" she asked, fluttering her eyes coquettishly. "Hmmph, so much for altruism. Well … what kind of reward did you have in mind?"

He stroked a strip of silky lavender hair-foil between his fingers, and leaned closer to her face. "I think you'll find my demands to be very reasonable, ma'am."

She traced a teasing metallic finger along his silvery chin. "Oh, I see. Well, I suppose I can arrange something to show my …" – she dragged her finger along his lips – "… appreciation …"

"I think this'll do," Drew smiled, closing his eyes. _Finally._ He'd been going _nuts_ all day to get a few moments alone with Ally. He cradled her cheek, and leaned in to kiss her smooth, beautiful …

"_Look out!_" shouted a voice from somewhere in the background.

Allison twisted her head around, yelped in shock, and ducked. But Drew still had his eyes closed, expecting to feel the cool electric touch of Ally's lips against his …

And instead, he got blasted in the face with a wayward glob of slick, splattering green Goop.

Allison bounced back to her feet, gasping in shock at the waterfall of green mucus dribbling down Drew's face. The android boy didn't budge a single millimeter. After what seemed like forever, two small circles of white appeared in the mass of Goop, two eyes blinking with cold, unflinching disgust.

She didn't even try to hold it in. She sputtered. Then she giggled. Then the Cluster robot girl broke out into howls of belly laughter, doubling over on the counter with tears streaming down her face. She laughed until she thought her voice processor was going to short out. She laughed until she felt gears slipping out of alignment on her drive shaft. She made a valiant effort to bring herself back under control, took another look at the slime dripping from Drew's hair – and rocked back on her feet, laughing even harder than she had the first time.

Drew finally reached up and wiped his face clean. A tiny smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Think that's funny, do ya?"

"Ah-ha … ah-ha … ah-ha …" – Allison gasped furiously, trying to keep her OS from crashing – "… well, now that you mention it … WAAA HAA HAA HAA HAA HAA …"

Drew reached over the counter, and picked up another Goop rifle.

"Ah-hee-heeeeee … ah-hee-heeeeee … ah … what are you …"

He started to pump the handle on the Goop rifle. A wicked grin spread across his face.

Allison gasped in horror. "Oh, no you _don't_. Put it down. You put that down _right now_."

Instead of answering, he kept pumping up the pressure on the Goop tank.

She took a few clumsy steps backwards. "I'm warning you. Don't you dare! I mean it! Look, I … ah-ha! I'm your superior officer, remember? You can't shoot me. Put the gun back now, Drew. Put it back! Now! I'm _ordering_ you to!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me? You're … _ordering_ me?" He pumped the handle faster.

"Okay, I'm making a strong suggestion," she stammered, crawling frantically over a table. "Drew, don't do it! Don't you dare! Don't you … _aiiiiiiieee_!"

And squealing like a schoolgirl with spiders in her hair, Allison broke into a mad dash, vaulting over chairs and tables with a grinning silver maniac five steps behind her. She buried her face in her hands, shrieking as she felt messy globs of Goop splatter into her long, lavender hair. Then, realizing that she was never going to outrun Drew, she grabbed a Goop rifle of her own from another counter – reasoning that sometimes the best defense was a good offense. With a few quick pumps of her rifle, she jumped on top of a table, and unleashed a withering volley of slime that painted Drew green from his neck to his knees. They ran from table to table for cover, laughing hysterically, pelting each other with nonstop barrages of sticky, slimy Goop. Finally, they ran out of ammo – so they jumped into the open, wiped the thick Goop off of their bodies, and hurled it at each other like green snowballs, laughing harder than they'd ever laughed before in their young lives.

But with so much slime flying around, the floor grew slippery – and Allison's feet started to fly out from under her. Drew rushed forward to catch her, but he slipped in a green puddle – and suddenly the robot teens found themselves tangled up together, sliding towards the Goop Zone ball pit, out of control. With a spectacular somersault, Drew and Allison plunged into the large tank of colored plastic balls, and sank to the bottom, completely disappearing from view. All that remained was the muffled sound of their raucous laughter. A few moments later, it settled down into chuckles and giggles. A few _more_ moments later, the tank grew silent – save for the occasional sound of smacking metal lips.

Then the surface of the pit erupted into a fountain of plastic spheres, and out jumped Tuck, coated in a layer of wet green slime. The slime may have been disgusting, but it was nothing compared to the hideous things he'd just witnessed in his hiding spot.

"BLEEEAHHH," he groaned, clutching his tummy. "_Robot cooties!_"

* * *

THE END

* * *


End file.
